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ORTHODOXY AND 
HETERODOXY 



DR. SHEDD'S WORKS 



Dogmatic Theology. 

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O RTH ODOX Y AND 



HETERODOXY 



H /ilMscellans 



. -'* 




WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

i893 




VJf 2.? 



A 










Copyright, 1893, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



THOW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



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PREFACE 

This Miscellany is composed of articles, some 
of which were written for special occasions, and 
some for the religious journals. While having 
this temporary reference, they relate to princi- 
ples in theology and ethics which are eternal, and 
are vehemently opposed in the standing conflict 
between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. For neither 
of these is a new thing. Both run parallel with 
each other in this apostate world, from the begin- 
ning. The history of mankind is the history of 
.the contest between truth and error. Unfallen 
Adam was confronted with fallen Satan. When 
God incarnate appeared, the Tempter met him in 
the wilderness. The holy supernaturalism of the 
kingdom of Christ was beset by the demoniacal 
supernaturalism of the kingdom of evil in " signs 
and lying wonders ; " and the Man of Sorrows, 
through his whole life of benevolence and love, 
was obstructed by " the powers of darkness." The 
regenerate church, from the first, has found an 
obstinate antagonist in the unregenerate world. 
Each kingdom has had its fluctuations, but truth 



VI PREFACE 

steadily grows stronger, and evil weaker, in the 
lapse of time. 

Orthodoxy is embodied in the dogmatic systems 
of ancient, mediaeval, and modern Christendom, 
which present a massive body of Biblical truth 
against which in every generation the antagonistic 
theories of the heterodox strike in vain. And 
there is little originality, in the sense of new dis- 
covery, upon either side. The conservative only 
restates the old faith. The radical only revamps 
the old error. Each draws from his predecessors 
the best part of his defence, or of his attack. 
There is nothing new in the orthodoxy of to-day ; 
and nothing new in the newest heterodoxy. A 
scholar versed in ancient learning can trace both 
alike in the antagonisms of the past. Speaking 
generally, the orthodox respects and cultivates 
systematic theology ; the heterodox contemns and 
vilifies it. The former maintains the carefully 
stated creeds of the evangelical denominations ; 
the latter seeks to revise, relax, and nullify them. 
Orthodoxy defines Christianity to be an exclusive 
religion, distinct from all others, and intended to 
convert them ; heterodoxy explains it to be a con- 
glomerate of all religions, and destined to be 
merged and lost in them. 

This volume \s polemic in the technical sense of 
the term. Its aim is to defend the historical faith, 
and to attack the contrary. Doctrines and not 
persons are in the writer's view ; and respecting 
these his statements are explicit and unequivocal. 
One special object is to set forth and vindicate 



PREFACE vii 

those stern and salutary phases of revealed truth 
which the Lord of heaven and earth had in mind 
when he said : " Think not that I am come to 
send peace on earth ; I am not come to send 
peace but a sword. I am come to send fire on 
earth." Matt. 10 : 34 ; Luke 12 : 49. This is an 
aspect of Jesus Christ which is studiously con- 
cealed in the existing onset of licence upon law, 
of heterodoxy upon orthodoxy. A healthy and 
vigorous state of religion, in all the churches, re- 
quires that this solemn and retributive attitude of 
incarnate God towards error and unbelief emerge 
again into luminous view, as it always has in the 
heroic and powerful ages of Christianity. All 
true religion represents the Supreme Being as 
ethically strict and holy, and all false religion as 
ethically easy and indulgent. The revelation 
which God made to Moses, when he established 
the Jewish church, announced both his " good- 
ness" and his "severity" (Rom. 11 : 22) in com- 
bination. On the entrance of the Israelites into 
the promised land, Jehovah proclaimed both his 
mercy and his justice, in the blessings of Gerazim 
and the curses of Ebal. And when the second 
Person of the Trinity laid the legal foundations of 
the Christian church in his Sermon on the Mount, 
the Divine emotions towards righteousness and 
unrighteousness were reaffirmed. The two ex- 
plain each other, and one is unintelligible without 
the other. The mercy of God is a cheap and un- 
meaning thing for the self-indulgent man who 
" thinks his Maker to be altogether such an one as 



viii PREFACE 

himself." The love of God needs the foil of the 
wrath of God to set it off, and make it bright and 
effulgent. A foil is a leaf of metal placed under 
jewels to increase their brilliancy. If taken away, 
they are dimmed. A generation that denies or 
ignores the Divine displeasure against wrong doc- 
trine and wrong living, cannot have a vivid sense 
of the Divine compassion. No man knows how 
absolutely infinite is the mercy of God, unless he 
first perceives what God might in justice do to 
him. The dazzling light of the Heavenly Pity is 
flashed only from the background of the Heavenly 
Purity. 

Books of this tenor are needed at the present 
juncture. Heterodoxy is, perhaps, more violent 
and resolute at the close of this century than ever 
before, and it is favored by the comparative apathy 
of orthodoxy. In the previous conflicts, the 
Church has stood alone by itself, holding its creed 
determinedly, and fighting its foe unflinchingly. 
There has been no admixture of truth and error. 
Now, the danger is that the orthodox shall weak- 
en, and tolerate, and yield. The former sharp 
distinction between the church and the world, the 
regenerate and the unregenerate, is blunted, and 
a considerable membership has entered the evan- 
gelical churches, which cannot be relied upon to 
defend strong views and statements of doctrine. 
What is needed is the concentrated and combined 
energy of the really orthodox in all denominations, 
to preserve their historical creeds, and maintain 
their ancient discipline. 



PREFACE ix 

The last four of the articles in the volume differ 
from the others in being political in their bear- 
ing. The concluding one, on " The Union and 
the War," presents the writer's views of the Fede- 
ral Union, of Slavery and Secession, of the right 
of Revolution in a Democracy, and of the true 
type of statesmanship under the American Con- 
stitution. 

New York, October, 1893. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Theological Independence, . . . . . i 

Courage in the Ministry, 24 

Injunctions to Ministers, 31 

One Truth for all Pulpits, 43 

Doctrinal Preaching, 47 

Boned Preaching, 51 

The Evils of Pulpit Notoriety, 55 

Overestimated Popularity, 59 

Wit and Humor in Preaching, . . . . .64 

The Credulity of Infidelity, 68 

Infidelity Seeks a Sign from Heaven, ... 72 
The Hasty Inferences of Infidelity, .... 79 

Stereotyped Errors of Infidelity, 83 

The Effrontery of Infidelity, 88 

The Meanness of Infidelity, 93 

The Connection between Infidelity and Sensuality, 97 

The Infidel Physics, 101 

Modern Apocryphal Gospels, 106 

The Two Views of the Old Testament, . . .112 

Conjectural Criticism, 128 

Pseudo-higher Criticism, 143 

Fluctuations in German Theology, . . . .154 
Human Alterations of the Fourth Commandment, 162 

Liberal Bigotry, 167 

"Orthodox Disbelief," t 174 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



"Orthodox Disbelief" (again), 

Endless Punishment an Essential Doctrine of 

Christianity, 

Hellphobia, 

The Sinner at Rest, 

All Religions not Equally Valuable, 

Christianity alone is Able to Incline a Man, 

The Reason why Sin should be Forgiven, 

Advice to the Inquiring Sinner, . 

Vicarious Atonement and Philanthropy, 

The Doctrine of Immortality, 

The Certainty of Future Blessedness, 

The Habit of Reading the Bible, 

A Little Religion is a Dangerous Thing, 

Not Wealth, but Competence, 

Denominational Unity Undesirable, . 

An American Fault, 

Political Fanaticism, .... 
The Dangers of Office-holding, . 
The Union and the War, 



178 

183 
189 

i93 
198 
207 
211 
216 
222 
226 
230 
235 
239 
243 
247 
254 
259 
263 
267 



THEOLOGICAL INDEPENDENCE 1 

Gentlemen : In beginning a new year of theo- 
logical study, it is natural to go to the Word of 
God for a word of instruction and of stimulus. 
The particular kind of instruction needed by both 
a teacher and a student is determined by the form 
and pressure of the time in which he lives. Spe- 
cial tendencies of the age call for special lessons. 
We are summoned to study theology in an apolo- 
getic age, rather than in a dogmatic one. The 
foundations of faith are now menaced. Men are 
denying the first principles of religion : the exist- 
ence of God, the immortality of the soul, the real- 
ity of the distinction between right and wrong, 
the freedom of the human will, the certainty of 
endless reward and punishment. In this state of 
things, it commonly happens that those evangel- 
ical doctrines which presuppose these truths of 
natural religion are somewhat overlooked. In an 
age of speculative unbelief, it cannot be expected 
that dogmatic theology will attract so much atten- 

l A Discourse delivered in Union Seminary. 



2 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

tion as apologetic theology. The first period in 
doctrinal history was engaged with the defences of 
Christianity, and it was not until this effort was 
concluded that the ecclesiastical mind entered 
upon the discussion of the more recondite and 
vexing topics of the trinity, original sin, vicari- 
ous atonement, and predestination. For the last 
twenty years Christendom has been employed in 
refuting the arguments of atheists and materialists, 
and for this reason has devoted less attention to 
the scientific construction of Christian doctrine 
itself. In some quarters this has led to an under- 
valuation of strictly dogmatic statements ; so that 
some good men are inclined to dispense with all 
but the more vague and general definitions of re- 
vealed truth. But this condition of things is tem- 
porary. When apologetics shall have once again, 
as in former periods, refuted and banished the 
popular unbelief, dogmatics will once again enlist 
the acumen and energy of the scientific mind. 
Meanwhile the Christian student and minister has 
a particular duty to perform in reference to this 
whole subject of scepticism : and it is, the duty of 
Theological Independence. 

By this, I mean, not independence of divine 
authority and revelation, but of human opinion, 
human science, and human literature. The words 
of St. Paul (i Cor. 4 : 3) should be the watchword 
and the battle-cry of the theologian : " With me it 
is a very small thing that I should be judged of 
you, or of man's judgment " ; or, as the original 
text reads, "by a human day." To be judged by 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 3 

a " human day" is to be judged by the spirit of 
the age. The spirit of an age is reflected in its 
philosophy, science, literature, and art. Revela- 
tion is judged by a " human day," whenever it is 
interpreted by the shifting theories in human spec- 
ulation, and the changing fashions in human taste 
and culture, instead of being interpreted by itself. 
St. Paul teaches that Revelation is self-consistent 
and self-explaining, and therefore will not submit 
to be made consistent with something that is not 
itself, or to be explained by it. Christian doc- 
trine, he contends, should be an evolution out of 
inspired materials, not a manufacture out of unin- 
spired. The apostle does not concede for a mo- 
ment, that the Christian religion is the product of 
any of the human centuries, even the vaunted 
nineteenth, and that like such products it may be 
subjected to the test of varying and oftentimes 
contradictory systems of science and philosophy, 
and temporary schools of literature and art. He 
asserts the difference in kind between the spiritual 
and the natural, the revealed and the non-revealed, 
and affirms the superiority of the Christian relig- 
ion not only to all other religions, but to all 
secular knowledge. "The foolishness of God is 
wiser than mefi." i Cor. i : 25. For this reason, 
he maintains that divine revelation is to criticise 
and judge the products of the human intellect, and 
that no product of the human intellect is to criti- 
cise and judge divine revelation. "He that is 
spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged 
of no man." 1 Cor. 2:15. According to St. Paul, 



4 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

divine revelation is higher than any "human day," 
than the spirit of any human age however en- 
lightened and progressive, than the human mind 
itself. He echoes the words of St. John, " He 
that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the 
earth : he that cometh from heaven is above all." 
John 3 131. 

I purpose to direct your attention to the proper 
attitude of the theologian and preacher toward the 
secular spirit ; that is, toward the intellectual move- 
ments and products of the time in which he lives. 

The proper attitude is that of independence, 
because Christian theology is derived from an in- 
fallible source. If this fact can be established, and 
is conceded, it of course elevates this theology above 
all the natural operations of the human intellect. 
For no product of the human intellect can be 
more trustworthy than the human intellect itself. 
No physics or ethics can be more reliable than its 
author. The Darwinian theory of evolution can 
have as much infallibility as Darwin had, but no 
more. The Spencerian ethics can be as free from 
all error as the intellect that made it, but no more. 
The demand, therefore, that Christianity submit to 
be judged and criticised by human science and phi- 
losophy requires, in order to be consistent, that 
these latter claim infallibility. This is what Chris- 
tianity does, when it subjects human science and 
philosophy to its criticism. The conflict between 
the Christian religion and science, if there be one, 
is ultimately a question as to which of the two is 
inerrant. One or the other must be, in order to 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 5 

be an arbiter over the other, and a court of last 
appeal. 

I do not propose to prove that the Christian 
Scriptures are an infallible revelation from God, 
but shall assume that this has been proved. I am 
addressing those who believe that it has been 
proved by an argument to which, for variety, mas- 
siveness and strength, no other religion or system 
can show an equal or a parallel. For that the 
Christian religion has presented more proof, and 
stronger proof of infallibility than any system of 
human science has yet presented, can hardly be 
doubted. It is certainly more probable that Moses 
and the prophets were under a special divine influ- 
ence, than that Hobbes and Spinoza were ; more 
probable that Jesus Christ had immediate connec- 
tion with God and the invisible world, than that 
Socrates and Confucius, and still less Boodha and 
Mohammed had. Comparing the influence which 
the Christian religion has exerted in the world, 
and the kind of effect it has produced, with that 
exerted and produced by any human system of 
religion or of science, it is certainly more credi- 
ble that the former is from heaven than that the 
latter is. 

Assuming, then, that there is such a thing as an 
infallible revelation from God, and that the theo- 
logian derives his system from it, I proceed to 
specify some particulars in respect to which he 
should be independent of what St. Paul denomi- 
nates " a human day." 

i. In the first place the theologian should be 



6 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

independent of the secular spirit and of popular 
opinion, in the interpretation of Scripture, and 
the construction of a creed. The church must not 
go to the literary and scientific world in order to 
find the meaning of the Bible, but to the Bible 
itself. The theologian should not ask either the 
physicist or the belle-lettrist for a systematic con- 
struction of the doctrines of religion, but should 
formulate them for himself. There is just now 
need of warning upon this point. As in all ages 
the world is prone in practical morals to encroach 
upon the church, and strives to infuse its frivolity 
and fashions into it, so in this age an uncommon 
effort is being made by the votaries of culture to 
inject their views of religion into Christianity ; in 
their phrase, to liberalize Christianity. They claim 
to occupy a. position superior to that of the theo- 
logian for the formation of a religion that is 
suited to man in an advanced civilization, and in- 
sist that the church purge its creed of certain doc- 
trines that offend their taste, or their sentiments. 
A different interpretation of Scripture from that 
of the church, and a milder creed, are required, 
they say, by an age so progressive and cultivated 
as the present one. 

The so-called polite literature, in particular, is 
now the channel in which this claim is conveyed. 
The belle-lettrist, in the novel, the poem, and the 
essay, throws a silken gauze over all the serious 
and solemn features of Christianity, and contends 
that the traditional explanation of the words of 
Christ, whose authority he does not venture to 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 7 

discard altogether, is antiquated, and incompatible 
with human civilization and refinement. The holy 
teachings of the Redeemer concerning sin and 
punishment, the day of judgment and eternal 
death, are omitted, and "the grace of God" is con- 
verted into what the theorist calls a " sweet reason- 
ableness," but what the apostle denominates "las- 
civiousness." This belle-lettrist theology is exert- 
ing a mischievous influence upon that younger 
class of educated persons who have not reached 
what Wordsworth denominates "the years that 
bring the philosophic mind," and gradually Chris- 
tianity is being emptied of its life and force, and 
religion becomes a weak sentimentalism, or a des- 
pairing unbelief. 

The duty and proper temper of the theologian 
and preacher in this state of things is that of inde- 
pendence. The question is not one of taste, but 
of eternal truth ; not of the ornaments of life, 
genuine or counterfeit, elegant or tawdry, but of 
human destiny. We are far from undervaluing 
genuine literature or genuine science, in their 
proper place and connections. Neither of them 
has suffered at the hands, or under the influence of 
the Christian religion. Some of their finest pro- 
ducts, like " Kepler's Laws," the "Divine Com- 
edy," and the "Paradise Lost," have arisen under 
the more logical and severer forms of Christian 
truth. But the question for the theologian, we 
repeat, is neither literary nor scientific. It is re- 
ligious. His first search must be for the mind of 
God in Revelation, not for the opinions of man in 



8 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

poetry, philosophy, science and art. Without, 
therefore, being diverted by the opinions of the 
scientist, or the belle-lettrist, as to what the Script- 
ures teach, or should teach, let him betake him- 
self to the study of the Word, and find its real 
meaning for himself. 

This line of remark holds good also in respect 
to the formulation of Scripture data into a creed. 
Indeed, it has even more force in this reference. 
In collating and combining the Biblical elements 
into a symbol for the use of a church, the theo- 
logian should be entirely independent of the sec- 
ular spirit. The councils and assemblies that 
constructed those symbols that have guided and 
consolidated the great Christian communions that 
adopted them, were very little under the influence 
of "a human day." They thought themselves to 
be under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and 
there is reason to believe that they were. The 
statements of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, of 
the Augsburg, Heidelberg and Westminster con- 
fessions, were not derived from philosophy or lit- 
erature, but from the unadulterated Revelation. 

There are two errors made current by some lit- 
erary men in this age, which, if adopted, interfere 
with the independence of the theologian, and bring 
him into bondage to the secular spirit and popular 
opinion. The first is, the separation of religion 
from theology ; and the second, the notion that 
religion can exist and prosper without the science 
of religion, that is, without creed statements : for 
theological creeds are theological science. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 9 

This false view of the relation of religion to 
theology, and of the life to the creed, has be- 
come wide-spread. A clamorous demand of this 
''human day" is for a religiousness wholly discon- 
nected from definite statements concerning either 
the character of God or man ; concerning either 
sin or salvation. A considerable class of educated 
and literary men tell us that they can worship 
without a Biblical creed, and ask us to do the 
same. One bright Sunday morning Thomas Car- 
lyle received a letter bringing the sad tidings of 
the death of John Sterling. "If on that day," 
said he, "I did no worship in the great cathedral 
of Immensity, surely the fault was my own." It 
is hazardous to state a man's creed for him. But 
probably no injustice is done to that impetuous 
and eccentric intellect, in asserting that the distin- 
guishing doctrines of the Apostles' creed formed 
no part of his belief. He accepted the truths of 
deism : the divine existence, the reality of right 
and wrong, the immortality of the soul, future re- 
ward and punishment ; but he rejected the truths 
of revelation : the trinity, the incarnation, the 
apostasy and the redemption. The "worship," 
whatever it was, which he rendered under the open 
sky, could not therefore have rested upon these 
tenets of Christendom. The " worship," whatever 
it was, could not have related to the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost ; could not have postulated the 
deity, miraculous birth and acts of Jesus Christ ; 
could not have involved the confession of sin and 
its remission through expiation. That there was 



IO ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

great awe, under the sense of the mystery of life 
and of death, and of the immensity of their rela- 
tions, there can be no doubt. That a strong tide 
of mixed and tumultuous feeling flowed through 
the soul, investing man and the universe with deep 
solemnity, there can be no doubt. But this is re- 
ligion divorced from theology ; worship apart from 
the Christian gospel. It is an attempt to produce 
in the human soul that form of consciousness 
which man ought to have towards God, without 
adopting those views of God which have been re- 
vealed as a guide and test in this very case. 

The theologian is bound to rise above this de- 
mand of the belle-lettrist, and assert both the 
necessity of Christian science and the indepen- 
dence of Christian science. Christianity must 
"keep state," to use the phrase of Howe, relying 
solely upon its own God-given power and re- 
sources. It was one of the merits of Schleier- 
macher, that he maintained that theology should 
stand alone. He refused to make it the slave of 
philosophy. For him it was an independent and 
a self-sustaining science. He would find its ele- 
ments in the Christian consciousness, not in the 
secular ; in the experience of the church, not of 
the world. It is indeed true that he was unsuc- 
cessful in carrying out his principle, because his 
interpretation and construction of the Christian 
consciousness was too subjective, too much sepa- 
rated from the objective and fixed Revelation, yet 
the principle itself was a sound one. Whenever 
a Christian creed is to be constructed, the appeal 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY II 

must be made to the conscious experience of the 
believer in Christ, as that experience has been 
generated and formed by the written gospel of 
Christ. Is the doctrine of vicarious atonement to 
be retained and urged in a denominational sym- 
bol ? Ask him who like St. Paul is conscious that 
by "the deeds of the law"; that is, by an im- 
perfect fractional obedience, which is the best that 
sinful man can render ; "no flesh can be justified." 
Is the doctrine of endless punishment to be main-- 
tained and emphasized in the creed of Christen- 
dom ? Ask him into whose conscience the light 
of inspired truth has flashed, and who vividly feels 
the intrinsic and eternal demerit of sin. 

This method is rational, and ought not to be 
complained of by the belle-lettrist himself. He is 
prompt to affirm that only the literary ard cul- 
tivated person is competent to estimate letters and 
culture. He contends strenuously that the theo- 
logian is not a judge of poetry and art. But 
upon the same principle the belle-lettrist is not 
qualified to decide questions in theology. In fact, 
he is less fitted for the function of criticism in a 
department that is not his own than is the theo- 
logian. For the products of genius and art address 
those aesthetic emotions which are natural and ir- 
repressible in every man. Consequently, even the 
popular uneducated judgment of a poem or a 
painting contains many elements of truth, when- 
ever the honest, unsophisticated feeling is allowed 
sway. But a product of profound reflection and 
close study of divine revelation, like a theologi- 



12 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

cal creed, not only addresses the abstract reason- 
ing faculty, but demands, in order to its com- 
prehension, a peculiar personal experience and a 
supernatural teaching. "The natural man receiv- 
ed! not the things of the Spirit of God, for they 
are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned." 
i Cor. 2:14. 

For this reason it will be found that the theo- 
logical class know much more of literature than 
the literary class know of theology. The literary 
judgments of a clergyman upon the poetry of 
Shakespeare and Milton would be far less liable 
to blundering and inaccuracy, than the theologi- 
cal judgments of a novelist or an artist upon the 
tenets of Dort and Westminster. The former 
might stand very respectably in a competitive 
examination in general literature, but the latter 
would certainly fail in a presbyterial examination 
for license to preach and teach theology. 

2. In the second place, the theologian should 
be independent of the sceptical literary spirit char- 
acteristic of the present " human day." 

Some forty years ago, I had occasion, in an ad- 
dress before a literary society, to call attention to 
the separation that had been brought about be- 
tween literature and theology, if the nineteenth 
century were compared with the sixteenth and 
seventeenth ; if the literature of the Elizabethan 
age were compared with that of Victoria. 1 But 
there is far more separation between literature and 

1 Shedd : Theological Essays, pp. 7-52. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 3 

theology now than forty years ago. The separa- 
tion has become antagonism. The same process 
which went on in Italy at the Renaissance, has 
gone on during the last half-century in England and 
America. Literature has become humanistic, and 
atheistic, because it has not felt the influences of a 
supernatural revelation. Those refined and taste- 
ful Greek scholars at the courts of Leo X. at 
Rome, and the Medici at Florence, renounced all 
faith in the principles of morals and religion, and 
the culture which they introduced into Italy, and 
from Italy into modern Europe, was sceptical, 
earthly and voluptuous. The same spirit is at 
work in literature, and in literary circles, at the 
present moment. Much has been said concerning 
the conflict between religion and science, but the 
conflict between religion and literature is far more 
important. The scientific class is a small one, the 
literary class is a large one. Where one person is 
made sceptical by a materializing physics, one hun- 
dred are made so by an infidel belles-lettres. . 

The polite literature of the last two or three 
decades has been greatly tinctured with disbelief, 
and contempt of divine revelation. Novels like 
those of George Eliot, and essays like those of 
Emerson, have preached it with a pertinacity and 
prolixity equal to that of the dullest of sermons. 
The works of Goethe, in particular, have contrib- 
uted to this infidelizing and degradation of good 
letters. Grounded in the pantheism of Spinoza, 
utterly earthly and unspiritual in tone, oftentimes 
directly and boldly immoral, the voluminous au- 



14 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

thorship of this writer is now. making itself felt in 
a considerable body of English and American com- 
positions. 

It is unfortunate, and in reality fraudulent, that 
the literature of Germany should have as its chief 
representative before the English-speaking races, 
such a mind and spirit as that of Goethe. There 
are worthier and greater names that have been 
temporarily displaced by him. The noble and 
lofty - minded Schiller, " whose muse was con- 
science," as De Stael has well said ; the penetrat- 
ing and discriminating Lessing, the first of critics ; 
the graceful and imaginative Tieck ; the profound- 
ly eloquent Schelling and Schleiermacher — each 
and all of them have left products which an un- 
biassed estimate will place above anything origi- 
nated by the man of Weimar. The Faust is the 
most sincere and earnest work of that mind so 
destitute of sincerity and earnestness, so marked 
by artistic indifference, and so devoid of the en- 
thusiasm of genius. The heartlessness and irrev- 
erence of the mocking fiend are unquestionably 
drawn to the life. Mephistopheles is the only one 
of Goethe's numerous characters in which he actu- 
ally merged his own individuality, and lost himself. 
Here, he becomes subjective. But what a centre- 
piece for the literature of a highly intellectual, 
highly spiritual, and highly reflective people like 
the Germans, is the Faust : a drama of which the 
whole interest turns upon the jaded sensibilities of 
a scholastic voluptuary, and the crimes of seduc- 
tion and infanticide. Compare this low and sen- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 5 

sual theme with the "high argument " of Milton, 
and the "obstinate questionings " and "blank mis- 
givings " of a Hamlet " moving about in worlds 
not realized," and then wonder that the Faust 
could ever have been compared with the great 
English epic and drama. 

It is this sceptical literary spirit, of which the 
theologian should be entirely independent. With 
the true literary spirit he is always in deep sym- 
pathy, because all the great products, all that is 
standard and perennial in every literature, is 
grounded in faith ; in that Christianity out of 
which, as from a tap root, all good letters spring. 
But when a spurious culture, originating in a physi- 
cal and luxurious civilization, proposes to remodel 
Divine Revelation, and teach the Christian church 
what its creed and worship should be, the Chris- 
tian church should turn a deaf ear, and set its face 
as a flint. When an authorship that sneers at con- 
fession of sin and trust in redemption arrogates to 
itself all the intellectuality of the time, the theo- 
logian should be utterly indifferent to the claim. 
The demand of litterateurs that Christendom re- 
nounce the Christian faith, that the Scriptures be 
emptied of their meaning, that the sense of sin 
and the consciousness of redemption, in which the 
church in all time has lived, moved and had its 
being, be extirpated — the demand that Christian- 
ity commit suicide, should be met with a silent 
disdain. 

I have thus, gentlemen, turned your thoughts 
to an important passage of Scripture, in which 



16 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

St. Paul enunciates the true position of the Chris- 
tian religion in reference to human science and 
literature. If Christianity is not a religion direct- 
ly from God, the claim to superiority which he 
sets up for it is insolent. But if it be an infallibly 
inspired system, the claim is legitimate and proper. 
It is high time to assert the claim. Whoever 
really derives the religion which he teaches to his 
fellow creatures from the revealed word of God, 
should be very bold in his teaching. " Audacity, 
audacity, always audacity," said Danton, should be 
the temper of a revolutionist. It certainly should 
be the temper of a Christian man and a Christian 
herald. It was the temper of Athanasius ; it was 
the temper of Martin Luther ; it was the temper 
of John Calvin. These men do not seem to have 
been in the least troubled by the timorousness of 
doubt. For them, Divine Revelation was as cer- 
tain as the evidence of their senses. As a conse- 
quence, they had the courage of their convictions. 
There is no bolder book in any language than the 
Institutes of Calvin. Luminous as the sky of 
Switzerland, and clear as the waters of lake Le- 
man, truth is enunciated in it with a confidence 
which the unbeliever calls dogmatism, and the be- 
liever knows to be insight. More of this positive- 
ness of faith and insight is needed in theoretical 
and practical Christianity. It is needed whenever 
doctrine is stated by the theologian or applied by 
the preacher. Creeds should be plain, explicit and 
firm. Preaching should be downright, direct and 
unhesitating. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY Ij 

Among the defects and faults of the seven 
churches of Asia, that of lukewarmness is de- 
nounced with most incisiveness by the Lord and 
Head of them all. " Because thou art neither cold 
nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Rev. 
3:16. The Laodicean temper is infused into Chris- 
tianity by that kind of literary influence of which 
we have spoken. It is the influence of dilettantism. 
Whenever culture becomes separated from the 
deep problems and truths of religion, and moves 
wholly in the aesthetic circles of art and fashion, 
it becomes shallow, pretentious, and insincere. 
Moral earnestness disappears from letters, and 
from every province affected by it. Those periods 
in the history of the Church, in which the theolo- 
gian was converted into a litterateur, the sermon 
into an elegant essay, and evangelical theology 
i-nto pagan ethics, were periods of lukewarmness 
and moral indifference. And yet they were peri- 
ods of vehement opposition to evangelical religion. 
For when the lukewarm mind is brought into 
close contact with truth and there is no way of es- 
cape from it, then the moral indifference is changed 
into moral animosity. The mild tolerance and 
gentle optimism that would accept all forms of 
religion, now becomes an intense aversion to that 
particular form of religion which teaches human 
depravity and salvation by grace. 

I have drawn one lesson from the writings of 
Carlyle, and will now draw another. The chief 
service which Carlyle did for his generation was 
the determined and obstinate warfare which he 



1 8 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

waged with the spirit of artistic indifference. It 
is one of the singular inconsistencies in his nat- 
ure, that the hero whom he himself worshipped 
was a mere literary artist ; an optimist without 
deep convictions or positive faith. That Thomas 
Carlyle should have bowed down before such an 
idol as Wolfgang Goethe, is one of the strangest 
facts in literary history. A rugged Goth, " terri- 
bly in earnest," as Jeffrey said of him, scorning and 
sneering at art in every form, vehement to spasm 
in opinions, admiring even the revolutionist and 
anarchist provided only he could use his tools 
with energy, seemingly out of all sympathy with 
the serene and graceful forms of the classic world 
— that such a mind as that should have sung the 
praises of one who after a brief stormy period in 
youth left all vehemence behind him, and for fifty 
years immersed himself in the placid element of 
Grecian culture, set beauty above truth and good- 
ness, made art the supreme end of education, and 
upon principle schooled himself into profound in- 
difference towards the religious problems of hu- 
man life and destiny, is unaccountable. 

In spite, however, of this man-worship, the fer- 
vid genius of the Scotchman has contributed to 
the restoration of positive opinions, and earnest 
defences of them. His repetitious denunciation 
of dilettantism and shams, if it be the substance of 
his thirty volumes, has nevertheless been a useful 
factor in the literary history of his generation. 

What he would do for literature you, Gentlemen, 
should do for theology and religion. Banish from 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 19 

your mind all theological dilettantism. Be in 
blood earnest both theoretically and practically ; 
in creed, and in preaching a creed. If at times 
the flesh is weak, though the spirit is willing ; if 
at times the enmity, and what is worse than en- 
mity the lethargy of the worldly mind causes you 
to shrink from delivering the unwelcome mes- 
sage, take refuge behind the very message itself. 
Say to yourself : " It is not my doctrine, but 
that of God Almighty. It is not my inspiration, 
but that of my Maker and Redeemer." At the 
beginning of a new year of study and preparation, 
let us all remember and remind ourselves that 
we are here to teach and study, not human sci- 
ence, or human literature, but Divine Revelation. 
With this thought continually before us, let us 
move forward with energy and courage. 

Note. 

Wordsworth the poet, Coleridge the poet philosopher and 
critic, and Niebuhr the historian, were three minds of the 
very first order in their respective provinces, and all of 
them perceived the moral and intellectual inferiority of 
Goethe compared with, the monarchs of literature. The 
following extracts evince this. 

In the Memoir of Wordsworth by his nephew (Ch. lxii.), 
the following estimate of Goethe is given. " Wordsworth 
made some striking remarks on Goethe, in a walk on the 
terrace yesterday. He thinks that the German poet is 
greatly overrated, both in this country and his own. He 
said, ' He does not seem to me to be a great poet in either 
of the classes of poets. At the head of the first class, I 
would place Homer and Shakspeare, whose universal minds 
are able to reach every variety of thought and feeling with- 



20 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

out bringing their own individuality before the reader. 
They infuse, they breathe life into every object they ap- 
proach, but you never find themselves. At the head of the 
second class, those whom you can trace individually in all 
they write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that 
Spenser writes, you can trace the gentle affectionate spirit 
of the man ; in all that Milton writes, you find the exalted 
sustained being that he was. Now in what Goethe writes, 
who aims to be of the first class, you find the man himself, 
the artificial man, where he should not be found ; so that I 
consider him a very artificial writer, aiming to be universal, 
and yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his 
character was not of a kind to dignify. He had not suffi- 
ciently clear moral perceptions to make him anything but 
an artificial writer.' " Emerson, in his English Traits (Ch. 
i.), records the following judgment of Wordsworth respect- 
ing the Meister. " He proceeded to abuse Wilhelm Meister 
heartily. It was full of all manner of fornication. It was 
like the crossing of flies in the air. He had never gone 
further than the first part ; so disgusted was he that he 
threw the book across the room. I deprecated this wrath, 
and said what I could for the better parts of the book ; and 
he courteously promised to look at it again." 

Coleridge, in his Table Talk, Feb. 16, 1833, speaks thus 
of Goethe's Faust. " The intended theme of the Faust 
is the consequences of a misology, or hatred and deprecia- 
tion of knowledge, caused by an originally intense thirst 
for knowledge baffled. But a love of knowledge for it- 
self, and for pure ends, would never produce such a mi- 
sology, but only a love of it for base and unworthy pur- 
poses. There is neither originality nor progression in the 
Faust ; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very begin- 
ning ; the incredulus odi is felt from the first line. The sen- 
suality and the thirst after knowledge are unconnected with 
each other. There is no whole in the poem ; the scenes are 
mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large part of the work is 
to me very flat. . . I was once pressed, many years ago, 
to translate the Faust ; and I so far entertained the pro- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 21 

posal as to read the work through with great attention, 
and to revive in my mind my own former plan of Michael 
Scott. But then I considered with myself whether the 
time taken up in executing the translation might not more 
worthily be devoted to the composition of a work which, 
even if parallel in some points to the Faust, should be truly 
original in motive and execution, and therefore more in- 
teresting and valuable than any version which I could 
make ; and, secondly, I debated with myself whether it be- 
come my moral character to render into English, and so 
far, certainly, lend my countenance to language, much of 
which I thought vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous. I 
need not tell you that I never put pen to paper as a trans- 
lator of Faust." 

Says Niebuhr, " We are now reading Wilhelm Meister. 
I had never before been able to take any pleasure in this 
book, and was curious to see if it would be different now, as 
in middle age we are less one-sided than in youth, and can 
enjoy relative and separate beauties, even when the whole 
does not make an agreeable or overpowering impression on 
us. But it is the same as ever with me. Our language pos- 
sesses, probably, nothing more elaborate and perfect in 
style ; it contains a multitude of acute remarks and elo- 
quent passages ; the situations are managed with extreme 
ingenuity, and all the parts are in admirable keeping ; all 
this I can appreciate now better than formerly. But the 
unnaturalness of the plot, the violence with which what is 
beautifully sketched and executed in single groups is 
brought to bear upon the development and mysterious con- 
duct of the whole, the impossibilities such a plot involves, 
and the thorough heartlessness which makes one linger 
with even the greater interest by the utterly sensual per- 
sonages because they do show something akin to feeling ; 
the villany or meanness of the heroes, whose portraits 
nevertheless often amuse us — all this still makes the book 
revolting to me, and I get disgusted with such a menagerie 
of tame animals." Life and Letters, p. 232 Ed. Harper. 
"We are very grateful to you [SavignyJ for Goethe's Life. 



22 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

It no longer, indeed, reveals to us the golden and silver 
ages described in the first volume, but a very iron age, 
where even his joys and delights are a fit of intoxication 
which the spectator neither can nor desires to share ; a 
strange, and to me for the most part incomprehensible 
kind of delirium, in which he often neglects what is most 
glorious. In many respects he was doubtless infected by 
the spirit of his age. It seems to me to be the same with 
Goethe as with many others who affect connoisseurship on 
subjects for which all true feeling is denied them. I am in- 
clined to think that Goethe is utterly destitute of genuine 
susceptibility to impressions from the fine arts ; that is, 
that he has no inward native insight which reveals to him 
what is really beautiful independently of the taste of the 
age, and still less in opposition to it ; or if he ever pos- 
sessed the gift as a young man at Strasburg, he lost it dur- 
ing the unhappy period (passed over without notice in his 
narrative) of his court life at Weimar, before his Italian 
journey, and has never recovered it. The whole tone of 
his mind during his travels and residence in Italy, which is 
most remarkable, and would alone have rendered this de- 
scription of his journey more interesting than anything else 
you could have sent us — is it not enough to make one 
weep ? To treat a whole nation and a whole country sim- 
ply as a means of recreation for one's self ; to see nothing 
in the wide world and nature, but the innumerable trap- 
pings and decorations of one's own miserable life ; to sur- 
vey all moral and intellectual greatness, all that speaks to 
the heart, where it still exists, with an air of patronizing 
superiority ; or where it has been crushed and overpowered 
by folly and corruption, to find amusement in the comic side 
of the latter — is to me absolutely revolting. From these 
' Travels in Italy ' sprang the i Grosscophta ' and those other 
productions, in which all that was holy and great in his 
nature is shrouded from view. Cornelius is a most thorough 
enthusiast for Goethe, perhaps none more so ; at least no 
man has owed so much of his inspiration to Goethe. He 
has a warm heart, and a fertile and profound intellect. At 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 23 

every spirited, lifelike description, his face lighted up with 
pleasure ; but as soon as that was over, resumed its expres- 
sion of sadness and regret. When we closed the book for 
the night, and still stood talking it over, he broke silence 
to say, how deeply it grieved him that Goethe should have 
looked on Italy thus ; that either his heart must have been 
pulseless during that period, or else he must have stifled all 
emotion, so completely to keep himself aloof from the sublime, 
so completely to divest himself of respect for the venerable. 
We were all agreed that the cause of this phenomenon 
must perhaps be sought in an unfortunate mood, and ob- 
stinate steeling of his heart against the sense of power in 
the works of others, in order proudly to hold everything he 
saw, as it were, in his grasp ; to treat it as his property, 
and to depreciate it when it pleased him ; and we all lifted 
up our voices and lamented over the fatal court life at 
Weimar where Samson was shorn of his locks." Life and 
Letters, pp. 342-346 Ed. Harper. 



COURAGE IN THE MINISTRY 



Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : Af- 
ter the animating addresses to which we have 
listened from your own number, you will have 
neither the time nor the. inclination to follow very 
long another speaker. Let me then in a few 
rapid sentences say something in harmony with 
the hour. 

You are going to work. Thus far you have 
been preparing for it. Now the preparation ends, 
and the steady, solid, heavy service begins. What 
you need is courage. This is my lesson and lect- 
(ure to you on this occasion. Why should you, 
and why should all ministers of the gospel, be 
intrepid, fearless, resolute, and bold ? 

i. In the first place, because you serve the Son 
of God, the Almighty Redeemer, "by whom were 
all things created that are in heaven and that are 
in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be 
thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers." 
All this immense power is behind you, if you are 
really meek and lowly disciples and ministers of 

1 A Discourse delivered in Union Seminary. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 25 

the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that this 
power is that of a living Person seated on an eter- 
nal throne. It is not the power of nature, but the 
power of God. It is not the energy of unconscious 
material laws and forces, but something infinitely 
mightier than they, even the intelligent and holy 
will of their Author and Controller. You are go- 
ing forth to declare a message that has been given 
to you by him who holds the seven stars in his 
right hand, and to whom as their commissioned 
Mediator, the eternal Trinity have promised in 
solemn covenant that "His dominion shall be 
from sea even to sea, and from the river even to 
the ends of the earth." Zech. 9:10. This promise 
was a source of courage on a memorable occasion. 
When the Lord Christ was riding lowly on an ass's 
colt down the slopes of Olivet, when the Mes- 
senger of the covenant was on the way to his own 
temple (Mai. 3:1), the band of his followers 
brought it to mind and shouted, " Blessed is the 
King of Israel that cometh in the name of the 
Lord. Hosanna in the highest heavens." John 
12:13 ; Matt. 21:9. 

Now, constantly call to mind this Almighty 
power and Trinitarian promise, and be full of 
courage respecting the success of your errand in 
this world. The omnipotence of Jesus Christ needs 
to be remembered, in a world and an age when the 
power of man and of nature is greatly exagger- 
ated and vaunted. Men who are travelling fifty 
miles an hour, and telegraphing a thousand miles 
a second, and tunnelling rivers and mountains, get 



26 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

the impression that they are more mighty than the 
generations that have gone before them ; more 
mighty perhaps than their Maker and Redeemer. 
They fall into the belief that there is nothing so 
strong in Christianity and the gospel, as there is in 
arts and sciences, inventions and civilization. This 
temper and feeling of the century tends to hamper 
and discourage spiritual workers ; those whose 
weapons are not carnal, those who have no con- 
trol of armies, navies, wealth, and commerce. It 
is indeed true that this overestimate and exaggera- 
tion of man and of material nature, is a great mis- 
conception : for this generation is no stronger 
before the old standing facts of death, judgment, 
and eternity, than the generations that have gone 
before it. The whole of modern science and civ- 
ilization cannot prevent death, cannot lengthen 
life, cannot escape eternal judgment. Before 
these fixed facts, one generation is as weak as an- 
other. Educated Europe is as helpless as barbaric 
Africa. " None of them can by any means redeem 
his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him, 
that he should still live for ever, and not see cor- 
ruption." Ps. 49:7, 9. Nevertheless, in the pres- 
ence of this rapid and absorbing material progress, 
this is forgotten, and one generation goes and 
another comes, full of infatuation respecting the 
comparative power of religion and civilization ; 
respecting the comparative power of the Son of 
God and the children of men. 

Be not entangled and involved in this error. 
Rise above the time and current, and remember 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 2j 

continually that the Lord Jesus Christ has a direct 
and personal power by which he can do anything 
that he pleases in this sinful and lost world. All 
power in heaven and on earth is in his hands, in 
order to the progress of his gospel and the triumph 
of his kingdom ; and he will use it when and where 
and how he pleases. He who called Lazarus from 
the grave, and will call all the dead from their 
graves, is mightier than nature, and is mighty to 
save, travelling in the greatness of his strength. 
And if you are meek and lowly before him ; if you 
walk humbly by his side, and desire nothing but to 
make him honored and obeyed and adored here on 
earth ; your work and message will be enforced by 
all of his omnipotence, and this will make you the 
boldest and most courageous of men. 

2. In the second place, you should be of good 
courage, because the Almighty Son of God will 
personally empower you as individuals for all that 
he appoints you to do. " Behold, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world. I will 
give you a mouth and wisdom, which all of your 
adversaries shall not be able to gainsay or resist." 
These are promises made to the Christian ministry, 
beginning with the Twelve Apostles, who stand at 
the head of the long roll. We have no doubt 
that these promises were made, and made good to 
St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul ; but so they 
were, and are, to every minister of Jesus Christ, 
past, present, and to come. These are pledges 
which the Lord gives to all his ministerial servants, 
equally and alike. It is true that we shrink from 



28 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

comparing ourselves with St. John and St. Paul 
in respect to zeal, sincerity, and self-sacrifice in 
preaching the gospel. Nevertheless we belong to 
the same class with them. We are the successors 
of the Apostles in every particular, excepting those 
of inspiration and miraculous gifts. All that 
Christ promised to them as preachers of his Word 
and servants of his Church, he promises to us. 
And he promised them power : inward power to 
understand the truth and to teach it, and the 
superadded power of the Holy Ghost effectually 
to apply it to the hearts of men. Rely on this 
kind of power, and be full of courage. Do not 
trust to culture, science, art, either in yourselves or 
in society ; but trust in that wonderful spiritual 
energy which, like the wind, bloweth where it 
listeth, and which, like the breath from the four 
winds, breathes on the slain, and they live. 

This is no new lesson that I have set you, my 
brethren. You know these things ; happy are 
you if you do them. When you shall have come, 
as some of your instructors have, very near to 
the close of your term of service in the Christian 
ministry, perhaps you will wonder as they do that 
there was not more of intrepidity, of courage, and 
of expectation, in the ministerial life. Could we 
but take our Lord at his word in the very opening 
of our ministry, could we but believe with a simple 
and undoubting faith his words of promise and of 
power, the ministry would be vastly more fruitful 
and vastly more blessed. 

Enter then upon the ministry of reconciliation, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 29 

firmly believing that you are serving "our great 
God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13), "by 
whom were all things made, and without whom 
was not anything made that was made." He will 
work in his own way, and according to the counsel 
of his own will. Like the stars which he made and 
governs, he moves without haste and without rest. 
Presume not to dictate the rate at which his king- 
dom shall make progress. Do your own piece of 
work to the utmost of your ability, lay it lowly at 
his feet, and trust him for the result and issue both 
of your work and of all work. 

This temper will keep you calm and keep you 
courageous. Charles Twelfth was once hard- 
pressed by his powerful foe, Peter the Great. On 
a map of Sweden he wrote these words, " God has 
given me this kingdom, and the devil shall not 
take it away." Do the same with the map of the 
world. Write upon it, "God has given to his 
Church and ministry the whole world, and Satan 
shall not take it away." 

With these words your instructors close their 
lessons and lectures to you. The connection and 
intercourse of three years have brought you closer 
and closer to them, in the bonds of Christian affec- 
tion and regard. They may not have said much, 
but they have thought and felt much. The rapid 
rush of life at this centre does not permit so much 
of personal intercourse as is possible in more quiet 
retreats. But you may be very sure that we have 
not met you in the class-room from day to day, 
from month to month, from year to year, without 



30 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

coming to know and respect your traits of mind 
and heart, to perceive your fidelity, and to honor 
your sincere purpose to make the most of your 
powers and attainments, for the service of our 
common Lord and Master. The tie between an 
instructor and his scholars is high and tender. It 
is intellectual, grounded in the mind. And in the 
instance of the theological instructor and scholar, 
it is spiritual, grounded in the heart and a common 
faith. The departure of a theological class into 
the work of the ministry, ruptures a bond that is 
stronger and tenderer than that which holds a class 
in college to its instructors. There are common 
Christian beliefs, hopes, aspirations, temptations, 
and triumphs, that make your graduation that of 
younger brethren and co-laborers. 

From their inmost heart, your instructors now 
bid you farewell and God-speed. "Wait on the 
Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen 
your heart; wait, we say, on the Lord." Psa. 37:14. 



INJUNCTIONS TO MINISTERS 1 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : The 
object of an address from a Seminary Faculty to a 
class of young men just leaving the institution for 
the serious work of their life must be, to speak if 
possible a few words that shall be "the words of 
the wise, which are as goads, and as nails fast- 
ened by the masters of assemblies." Eccl. 12:11. 
There is little time for the expansion of ideas, and 
no call for labored instruction. Let me, then, in 
the briefest manner possible, bring to your thought 
two or three injunctions that are suited to all 
times, and specially to this time. 

1. In the first place, remember that your spe- 
cial work among mankind is, to teach revealed 
truth. You have not studied ten or fifteen years 
in order to conduct trade, to invent arts, to man- 
age politics, but to convey ideas. Your function 
is that of instructors. And it is instruction of the 
highest order: that which relates to the immortal- 
ity of man and the infinite part of his existence. 
Let nothing divert you from this kind of labor. 

1 An Address delivered in Union Seminary, 



32 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

If you are asked to leave it, and take the govern- 
ment of a kingdom, or the control of immense 
material interests, say with Nehemiah, " I am doing 
a great work; I cannot come down." Nehem. 6:3. 
Devote your entire future life, be it ten years or for- 
ty, to the instruction of your fellow-men in the doc- 
trines of the Christian religion, so that at the close 
of it you can say : " I have not accumulated wealth, 
I have not swayed senates, but I have taught the 
Word of God." "I have preached righteousness 
in the great congregation ; I have not refrained my 
lips, O Lord, Thou knowest." Ps. 40:9. 

2. In the second place, remember that he who 
teaches revealed truth to mankind, glorifies God in 
the highest degree possible to a feeble instrument 
like man. He who erects a temple for divine 
worship honors God. He who founds a univer- 
sity or builds a hospital from Christian love for 
man, honors God. He who performs any kind of 
Christian service, be it a gift of cold water, honors 
God. All such service is accepted and rewarded. 
But the very highest service which any human 
creature can render here upon earth to the Triune 
God, is to preach his Word. When Christ chose 
twelve men to be the teachers of mankind in the 
truths of his religion, he exalted them above all 
the Caesars. What emperor, what poet, what phi- 
losopher, to-day, stands so high in the scale as St. 
Paul ? When Christ calls a man to the ministry 
of the Word, he calls him to do a work for which 
he is himself personally more concerned than he is 
for any other. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 33 

The secret of the interest which God takes in 
the truths which you are to teach, lies in the fact 
that they centre in the redeeming work of the Son 
of God. Redemption is a Trinitarian transaction. 
God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost originate 
and execute it. Hence their infinite concern for 
its success. We forget, in our puzzle over the 
problem of sin, that the dreadful effects of sin are 
not confined to man the sinner. The permission 
of evil has not only ruined man, but has involved 
the merciful Godhead in an immense self-sacrifice. 
The entrance of sin into this lower world, has cost 
God the holy more them it has cost man the sinner. 
Not all men together have suffered so much, or 
will suffer so much, for their own sin, as God in- 
carnate has vicariously suffered for it. The Lord 
Jesus Christ can say to every sinner upon earth : 
" You have not resisted unto blood, striving 
against sin. You have not in anguish cried, If it 
be possible, let this cup pass from me. You have 
not in agony exclaimed, My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me ? " 

This stupendous self-sacrifice on the part of one 
of the Trinitarian persons, accounts for the Divine 
zeal for that system of truth connected with the 
crucifixion of the Lord of glory, and explains 
God's interest in the preaching of the gospel. 
God infinitely desires the success of it ; and the 
success of it he has made to depend upon the 
teaching of it to all the world by the Christian 
ministry. Whoever, therefore, preaches Christ 
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 

3 



34 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

world, does a human act, than which there is 
none higher in the Divine estimation. In the 
great day, there will be many rewards of vary- 
ing value for varying services. Our Lord will 
speak an applauding word to every faithful dis- 
ciple. But to that minister of the Word who, ut- 
terly unknown to the busy secular world, lived and 
died among the benighted heathen, he will ad- 
dress a plaudit to which the mass of the church 
is not entitled : " Well done ; for thou hast 
preached my cross and passion ; thou hast, in- 
strumentally, sprinkled my blood upon human 
souls." " I saw," says St. John, " the souls of 
them that were beheaded for the witness of Je- 
sus, and for the Word of God ; and they lived 
and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But 
the rest of the dead lived and reigned not, un- 
til the thousand years were finished." Rev. 
20:4, 5. 

3. In the third place, remember that he honors 
God most highly, who preaches God's truth most 
truly. When Dante reaches the ninth and last 
heaven of Paradise, he hears from Beatrice a ve- 
hement denunciation of certain theologians and 
preachers of those days, whose ignorance or ava- 
rice induced them to substitute their own inven- 
tions for the pure word of the Gospel. She then 
tells him that : 

" Christ said not to his first conventicle, 

1 Go forth and preach impostures to the world.' 
But gave them truth to build on ; and the sound 
Was mighty on their lips : nor needed they, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 35 

Beside the gospel, other spear or shield, 
To aid them in their warfare for the faith." 

Paradise, xxix., 1 15-19. 

All truth is powerful in proportion as it is 
thoroughly stated. A half-truth is weaker than a 
whole-truth. Dilutions are not pungent. The 
secret of intellectual power is intellectual inten- 
sity. When there is a zeal for God's house, the 
zeal eats up both the speaker and hearer. This 
was that devouring energy that made the Son of 
God so earnest, when, on the way to Jerusalem 
and the bitter cross, he strode on before the disci- 
ples and " they were amazed." Mark 10:32. The 
Redeemer never stated truth languidly or hesi- 
tatingly. His double, " Verily, verily, I say unto 
you," implies that his perception was thorough, 
and his belief undoubting. 

Now, this must be the style of his ministers. 
They are ambassadors in his place, and they must 
not appear before men querying and doubting, but 
asserting and demonstrating. They cannot, in- 
deed, speak with that almighty and overwhelming 
power that belonged to their Divine Lord ; and 
he does not require this of them. The Lord 
Jesus Christ was never foiled in an argument ; and 
he always silenced his opponent. He spake as 
never man spake. But the minister of Christ can 
possess some of his Master's power. If he fol- 
lows him closely, if he studies him closely, if he 
communes with him closely, he will derive from 
him some of that spiritual energy, that sincere 
downrightness, and that holy boldness, which 



36 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

compels the attention and respect of the human 
mind. 

Endeavor, then, during the twenty or forty 
years that you shall be giving religious instruction 
to your fellow-men, endeavor to present the whole 
truth. Adopt no hesitating and half-way views. 
Make no hesitating and half-hearted statements. 
Preach the truth truly. 

4. In the fourth place, remember that revealed 
truth must be preached exclusively. When the 
Emperor Galerius lay dying, in the hope that the 
God of the Christians might possibly give him 
the help which all his supplication to the heathen 
divinities had not succeeded in obtaining, he issued 
an edict abolishing the persecuting laws against 
the Christians, permitting them to erect their 
sacred edifices, and to perform their public wor- 
ship unmolested. But with this condition : that 
they should do nothing to weaken the old religion 
of the Roman Empire, and should not attempt to 
convert any one from the religion of his ancestors 
to the new Christianity. (Mosheim's Commenta- 
ries, ii., 452.) The requirement was, that Christi- 
anity should be only one of several religions : e 
pluribus unum. The Christians could not accept 
such a deliverance from persecution as this. They 
had received a commission to preach the gospel to 
every creature under heaven, and to proclaim to 
the wide world, with all its nationalities and reli- 
gions, that there is no other name, under heaven, 
given among men, whereby they must be saved, 
but the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 3? 

They understood Christianity to be an exclusive 
religion. They were not willing to place the bust 
of Jesus Christ in the Pagan pantheon with those 
of Jupiter and Apollo. They would go to the 
stake, rather than promise not to endeavor to con- 
vert men from paganism to Christianity. 

Now, this must be the spirit of Christ's minis- 
ters in all time. They cannot consent to put the 
Christian gospel among the religiones licitce, the 
allowable religions. This is the demand now 
made upon the Christian church, in some quarters. 
A class of popular but superficial writers are ac- 
tually proposing to Christendom that it receive 
religious instruction from Boodha, and get divine 
illumination from the " Light of Asia." Natural- 
ism, both in literature and science, denies the ex- 
clusiveness of Christ's gospel, and with Pope, in 
his Universal Prayer, calls upon the 

Father of all, in every age, 

In every clime adored, 
By saint, by savage, and by sage, 

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. 

To grant this demand, is to destroy Christian- 
ity. Because it proceeds upon the assumption 
that man has no sin that requires atonement and 
remission, and no corruption that necessitates 
regeneration. This theory of one universal relig- 
ion made up of a conglomeration of all religions, 
supposes the essential soundness of human nature, 
and denies the doctrines of man's guilt and Christ's 
vicarious sacrifice. It implies that humanity, by 



38 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

means of its natural religious sentiment and its 
progressive tendencies, can lift itself up from 
lower to higher grades of character and condi- 
tion. 1 

Now if there is any one postulate more anta- 
gonistic than another to the claims of Christ and 
his religion, it is this. And if there is any one de- 
mand made by this portion of the educated classes 
that is to be more determinedly repelled than an- 
other, it is this. ' ; Think not," said the Founder 
of Christianity, "that I am come to send peace on 
earth : I came not to send peace, but a sword." 
Matt. 10:34. Let no man think that those car- 
dinal doctrines and facts of the Christian religion 
which are grounded in the assumption of the fall 
and ruin of all mankind, can be made to harmo- 
nize with any schemes that deny or overlook this. 
Christianity will recognize whatever elements of 
ethical truth there are in the natural ethnic relig- 
ions, expelling the large amount of error mixed 
with them, but will never stoop to be classified 
with them, or to be put upon an equality with 
them. 

But some man will say : " This will make the 
Christian minister haughty and intolerant. This 
will bring back the middle ages, and the tyranny 
of the Papal church." Not so, if the Christian 
minister counts himself as the mere servant, and 
an unworthy servant, of his divine Lord and 

1 The proposed Congress of All Religions at the Columbian Ex- 
position looks in this direction, and tends in its practical influence 
to equalize the ethnic religions with Christianity. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 39 

Master. If he regards himself as teaching the 
results of his own investigation, and the product 
of his own discoveries in religion, then, indeed, to 
proclaim an exclusive religion will be the height 
of vanity, and also of absurdity. But if he sinks 
and buries out of sight his own feeble and falli- 
ble personality, in the wisdom and authority of di- 
vine revelation, and of the high command: "Go, 
preach my gospel to every creature," he will not 
be a proud man, but a very lowly one. When 
Moses and Aaron, in a moment of egotism, said 
to the people : " Hear now, ye rebels ; must we 
fetch you water out of this rock ? " (Numbers 
20:10), their pride wakened the divine displeas- 
ure, and they were chastised by not being per- 
mitted to bring the people into the promised land. 
But when Moses said to Jehovah : "If thy pres- 
ence go not with me, carry us not up hence " (Ex. 
33:15), he was the meekest of men. 

Neither need the minister of the Christian 
religion be feared on the ground of intolerance. 
The days of bloody persecution are over. The 
conflict now is that of ideas and opinions. Every 
creed is tolerated. The atheist can blaspheme his 
Creator to his heart's content on a public platform, 
with none to molest him or make him afraid. A 
polygamous community dwells unharmed in the 
midst of Christian institutions. He who wants 
more toleration than this, wants, in the phrase of 
Sancho, " better bread than can be made of 
wheat." But some men do ask for more. They 
require that opinions upon the grave and solemn 



40 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

subjects of human responsibility and destiny which 
clash with their own, be surrendered. They call it 
intolerance, when a Christian denomination holds 
a strong creed, and insists that its clergy hold it, 
•^and preach it. They denominate it bigotry, when 
Christian churches refuse to accept certain tenets, 
or to do anything that will promote their extension 
among men. Now if this is intolerance, it must 
be tolerated. Opinions must be left free. Every 
man must be permitted to think for himself, and 
form positive and fixed views if he please. And so 
must every association of men. It is too late for 
the "liberal" theologian to say to an ecclesiastical 
denomination, " You shall not be Calvinists, nor 
require that those who voluntarily join you shall 
be so likewise or be expelled from the body." 

When, therefore, great and influential masses 
of men organize themselves into churches founded 
upon creeds derived in their opinion from an in- 
fallible revelation, they are not to be charged with 
an intolerant and persecuting spirit. The conflict 
between them and their opponents is largely in- 
tellectual, though not wholly so, because the heart 
is concerned as well as the head. It is a question 
of logic as well as faith. The closest reasoner, 
not the inquisitor with thumb-screw and rack, will 
carry the day. If Celsus argues more powerfully 
than Origen, Hume than Butler, Strauss than 
Neander ; if in the long sweep of the ages skep- 
ticism evinces a purer reason and a deeper intui- 
tion than faith, then skepticism will conquer the 
human intellect, and take it captive. Let both 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 41 

grow together, then, until the harvest, and as the 
Christian church brings no charge of bigotry and 
intolerance against the disbeliever, so neither let 
the disbeliever bring this charge against the Chris- 
tian church. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : You 
stand now on the threshold of ministerial life. 
The years of preparation and public irresponsi- 
bility are behind you. Before you, are those of 
leadership and accountability. You are now to 
guide opinions, and particularly the religious 
opinions of men. Upon the clergy, depends very 
greatly the mode of thinking, and the tone of feel- 
ing, in the Christian church. If you are clear, 
bold, and firm, in your statement of divine truth, 
you can be tracked by the positive and energetic 
churches which will respect you, and cling to 
you with hooks of steel; and you will be remem- 
bered long after this brief life is over, by the 
transmitted vigor and force of your ministry. St. 
Paul exhorted Timothy to " make full proof " 
of his ministry. This meant a concentration of 
his power ; a full performance of the duties of his 
calling. Those of us who can look back over 
forty years of intellectual and spiritual service can 
see a failure in this respect. If called to pass 
over it once more, they would endeavor to live a 
more simple, a more sincere, a more undivided 
life. The glory of God, the honor of Christ the 
Lord, is the one motive that simplifies and con- 
centrates human service. There is no scattering 
of energy, when that end is before a man. We 



42 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

are not our own. We did not create ourselves ; 
we do not uphold ourselves ; and we do not re- 
deem ourselves. But we live and labor too 
much as if we had a private and independent ex- 
istence of our own. We do not lose ourselves 
in God, and hence our work is mixed with subtle 
references to self. This makes us anxious ; and 
anxiety weakens and discourages. Endeavor to 
discharge your coming ministry in simplicity and 
godly sincerity. Then you will not be cast down 
by seeming failure, or elated by success. Your 
ministerial life will be calm; the close it will be 
eternal peace ; and the result of it a far greater 
amount of usefulness than can be reached by any 
other method. 

"The Lord bless you, and keep you. The 
Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be 
gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his coun- 
tenance upon you, and give you peace." This 
ancient benediction your instructors utter with all 
their heart, as they now bid you a most hopeful, 
and a most affectionate, Farewell. 



ONE TRUTH FOR ALL PULPITS 

" There are diversities of operations, but it is 
the same God which worketh all in all," said St. 
Paul to the Corinthian church, and to the church 
universal. By this he teaches, among other things, 
that all Christian ministers ought to hold the same 
fundamental truth, though they may preach it in 
different modes and manners. The same Holy 
Ghost employs the same doctrines of law and gos- 
pel, exerts the same divine influence, and produces 
the same personal experience, when he makes a 
Christian of John Calvin as when he makes a 
Christian of John Weslev. But the treasure is in 
an earthen vessel, and there is a difference in the 
way in which it comes out of the vessel. Two 
equally good men may not be equally successful 
in describing their own religious experience to 
others. But the description of the religious expe- 
rience is substantially a statement of religious doc- 
trine. If the one man is able to state it with great 
fulness and self-consistence while the other reports 
it with less fulness and logical consistency, it is 
plain that to a mere student of theological systems 



44 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

the two men will so differ as perhaps to lead to the 
conclusion that they do not believe the same fun- 
damental truth, and do not have a common relig- 
ious experience. But this is an error. He who 
searches the heart perceives that the two men agree 
in their view of their own sinfulness and of Christ's 
redemption. They hold the same gospel truth, 
and therefore they are brethren in the Lord. 
Their religious experience, which is what God has 
wrought in them, is the same evangelical experi- 
ence that belongs to all members of the one invisi- 
ble church of Christ. 

This diversity in the expression and statement 
of evangelical truth appears also in the preacher as 
much as in the theologian. And it is increased 
in this instance by the operation of other causes. 
There is more play of the imagination, more illus- 
tration, more presentation of truth in loose and 
flowing costume, in the instance of the orator than 
in that of the school-divine. It is not strange that 
statements of doctrine before an auditory should 
be less guarded and less precise than before a theo- 
logical class. Some one has defined eloquence to 
be exaggeration. He was probably like the phi- 
losopher Kant an enemy to anything but the close 
and exact propositions of logic, and put his dislike 
to rhetoric in this peculiar definition. Yet there is 
truth in it. Discourse for the people must have a 
dash and rush that are out of place in the closet 
of the thinker. St. Paul alludes to this when he 
speaks of himself as " planting," and of Apollos as 
"watering." Logic plants, and rhetoric waters. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 45 

The great apostle to the Gentiles tacitly conceded 
an eloquence of speech to Apollos which God had 
denied to himself. His own function was to write 
the epistle to the Romans, while his coadjutor 
was to be "an eloquent man mighty in the Script- 
ures." We do not of course deny eloquence to 
St. Paul ; the speech on Mars' Hill is powerful 
Demosthenean eloquence. But, comparatively, 
he was more of a logician than a rhetorician. It 
was the converse with Apollos. But with this 
"diversity of operation" there was the same spirit. 
The same God the Holy Ghost wrought the same 
faith, the same hope, the same religious experi- 
ence, in both of these men. 

We come, then, to the conclusion for which we 
have made these preliminary statements, namely, 
that in all Christian pulpits, however different may 
be the mental and oratorical characteristics of the 
preachers, the same kind of religious impression 
ought to be made and the same fundamental truth 
ought to be taught. The result of logical preach- 
ing, of imaginative preaching, of illustrative preach- 
ing, ought, with the divine blessing, to be the 
same. And what is this result ? Plainly the con- 
viction of men, if they ought to be convicted ; 
their conversion, if they need to be converted ; 
their sanctification, if they require it. 

Here, then, we have a test by which to try the 
preachers of the day, and of all time. If a pulpit 
orator artfully avoids all those parts of divine rev- 
elation which treat of sin and perdition, and never 
preaches a sermon that awakens fears that the soul 



46 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

may be lost forever, it will not do to say that he 
has the same spirit with St. Paul, only there is a 
"diversity of operation." There is one impres- 
sion which St. Paul made, which he never makes. 
This is something more than a rhetorical difference 
between him and the inspired apostle. There is 
a difference in doctrinal belief. 

The defect, and the fatal defect, in some of the 
popular preaching of this age, is that under the 
covert of mere rhetoric without logic, of mere 
illustration without argument, of mere story-tell- 
ing without religious point or pertinence, of mere 
figures and tropes, men are persuaded to believe 
that religion is a very lovely song, and that all 
men are naturally religious because they enjoy the 
music. . The impression made, and it is the im- 
pression that decides the character and value of the 
preaching — the impression actually made upon the 
audience is this: "Get rid of your religious fears 
and you are all right. If the ostrich will only 
stick his head into the sand, he is perfectly safe." 



DOCTRINAL PREACHING 

An ignorant but well-meaning member of a 
Christian church was once asked how a certain 
minister had impressed the congregation by his 
preaching. The congregation were more than 
usually susceptible to religious impressions. A 
revival was in progress. The good man had this 
fact in his mind, in his answer to the inquiry. 
"He did not do well at all," was the reply, "he 
came down and preached a doctrine sermon right 
in the midst of the interest ! " We fear that this 
notion that doctrinal preaching is ill-adapted to 
promote the best interests of a church, is more 
common than it ought to be among those who 
are commanded to account those elders "worthy 
of double honor who labor in the word and doc- 
trine," and who are bidden to see that the "name 
of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed." 

The prejudice against doctrinal preaching arises 
from two causes. The first is the aversion of the 
heart to God's revealed truth. Whenever this 
truth is stated doctrinally, it is stated clearly and 
pointedly; and the point pierces. It is hard to 



48 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

kick against the pricks. Men do not object to 
have the truth respecting sin, death, and hell pre- 
sented poetically and sentimentally, because in 
this form it gives no trouble ; but when it is 
stated plainly and accurately, they wince. Men 
are never convicted by a poem ; they are by a 
doctrine. 

The second objection to doctrinal preaching 
springs from the natural indolence of the human 
mind. It costs more mental effort to listen to a 
well-reasoned sermon, than to a flowery one that 
starts from no premises and comes to no conclu- 
sion. We do not believe that it is a complete de- 
finition of sin to say that it is laziness, but it is 
safe theology to say that every sinner is lazy. 
When, therefore, clear and logical statements of 
Christian truth are made, they require an effort 
on the part of the hearer to follow them from 
beginning to end. This effort he is unwilling to 
make, and instead of repenting of his sin and for- 
saking it, he decries doctrinal preaching. 

But the fault is not always in the hearer. The 
preacher is often at fault. The clergy are af- 
fected by their congregations. Finding a disin- 
clination in the congregation to listen to cogent 
preaching, to "reasoning out of the Scriptures," 
the minister yields, and shrinks from the plain 
and solemn message which God has bidden him 
to deliver, and which he promised to deliver when 
he took his ordination vow. There are many 
reasons against such a course which we cannot 
mention in this brief article. Passing over all 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 49 

those grave and conclusive reasons which relate 
to the glory of Christ and the salvation of souls, 
we call attention to the fact that the neglect of 
doctrinal preaching results in the decline and de- 
cay of the preachers powers. A man who never 
studies and preaches doctrine grows weaker day 
by day. We do not now allude to spiritual power. 
Of course he becomes less serious and holy, and 
more and more worldly. But we speak of intel- 
lectual power. A doctrine is a clear and accurate 
statement. The doctrine of the atonement, for 
example, is such an account of the sufferings and 
death of Jesus Christ as causes a hearer or reader 
to understand distinctly why Jesus Christ suffered 
and died, and for whom. Now, it is an inevitable 
effect of making sharp and strong statements to 
make the mind sharp and strong. We observe 
this in the legal profession, from which the clerical 
profession in these days of loose and vague decla- 
mation ought to learn some things. That lawyer 
who is noted for the power of stating a case, is 
noted for his mental acumen and ability. But the 
lawyer's case is the lawyer's " doctrine." It is a 
plain and accurate statement of a fact or facts. 
He has been employed to make it, and the more 
precise and exact the style in which he does this, 
the better is his client pleased, and the more likely 
is he to get the verdict. 

Some preachers take a very different course 
from that of the lawyer. What would be thought 
of a lawyer who should decry Blackstone's Com- 
mentaries and Coke upon Lyttleton, upon the 
4 



SO ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ground that they are too doctrinal, and that juries 
are not interested in reasoning and logic, and 
should prepare for the court-room by the peru- 
sal of the trial of Mr. Pickwick, and attempt to 
obtain legal knowledge from Serjeant Buzfuz ? 
And yet certain preachers who contrive to attract 
large miscellaneous audiences pursue a similar 
course. They not only neglect doctrinal theology, 
but they vilify it. They do not deduce from the 
Scriptures a system of infallible truth, which they 
convey to the understandings of their hearers, but 
they expatiate and oftentimes vociferate upon 
some moral or immoral subject to which they 
attach a Biblical text — a short tail to their long 
kite. 



BONED PREACHING 

The value of truth is never more evident than 
in a period of revival in the churches. When the 
Holy Spirit is poured out, and operates as a Spirit 
of conviction, if he finds the doctrines of revela- 
tion already laid up in the mind, he employs them 
in bringing men to a sense of their sin and spiritual 
need. Consequently those communities who have 
been the best instructed by a faithful ministry of 
the Word, are those who derive most benefit from 
a religious awakening. It is to be hoped that the 
present gracious visitation of the churches through- 
out the country, by the Divine Spirit, will result, 
among other things, in a deeper sense of the im- 
portance of sound doctrine. And it is matter of 
thankfulness that the large masses which during 
the past weeks have been listening to the preacher 
and singer at the Hippodrome, have been taught 
the vital truths of revelation. Not the least of 
the good effects of the labors of Moody and 
Sankey is the restoration of the doctrines of sin 
and grace, of guilt and atonement, to their proper 
place in the popular mind. 



52 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

For some years past it has been a discouraging 
characteristic, that large audiences have been drawn 
together and held by a style of preaching that dis- 
paraged and oftentimes ridiculed evangelical truth. 
A great congregation and a popular speaker have, 
too frequently, been equivalent to reckless teach- 
ing and reckless hearing. The masses have been 
told that theology is a skeleton, and should be 
buried out of sight with other skeletons. Distinct 
and definite statements, especially those that re- 
late to man's guilt and danger, to the wrath of 
God and the necessity of fleeing from it, have 
been stigmatized as dry bones. That incorrigible 
jester, Sydney Smith, told an old lady who asked 
him how he managed to keep cool during the very 
hot weather, that he took off his flesh and sat in 
his bones. These preachers reverse this method. 
They take out their bones and sit in their flesh. 
And what a mess they make of theology. What 
a flabby pulp is their sermonizing. Their dis- 
course has no organization. "A very eloquent 
talker indeed," said Hazlitt of a certain person, 
"if you let him start with no premises and come 
to no conclusion." The remark was untrue of 
the distinguished man respecting whom the acrid 
Hazlitt said it, but it is strictly true of certain pul- 
piteers who during the last decade have been 
styled by the newspapers the greatest preachers of 
the age. Some of these sermons have been pub- 
lished, and constitute several volumes. He who 
should sit down and endeavor to deduce from 
them a series of truths for the guidance of man in 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 53 

his search for salvation, would be greatly per- 
plexed. Orthodoxy upon one page is contradicted 
by heresy on the next. The reader is told in one 
breath that he must seek salvation, and in the 
next that he is already safe enough. Regenera- 
tion is now the work of God, and now man's 
self-improvement. From the mass of self-contra- 
dictions, however, the hearer is certain to derive 
the impression that the looser statement is the 
better of the two. The orthodoxy is, after all, 
merely a tub thrown for the whale to play with, 
while the harpoon is being aimed at his vitals. In 
this way the popular audience has been wheedled 
into the belief and reception of deadly error, 
under the guise of evangelical religion, and from 
a preacher of evangelical connections. From the 
pulpit and through the press, this kind of religious 
teaching has spread through society, and has seri- 
ously weakened the religious faith of the masses. 

There are indications, now, of a change for the 
better. We hope that the worst has been seen, 
and that the tide has turned. The so-called " lib- 
eral " religion begins to be looked at suspiciously. 
Men fear that loose theory is likely to end in loose 
practice, lax theology in lax morality. The com- 
mon sense of men cannot be abused too long. 
The popular audience, after a time, becomes 
weary of self-contradictions, and desires to be fed, 
as St. Paul fed his audiences, "with knowledge 
and understanding." May we not expect that as 
the masses are now ready to go, day after day of 
the secular week, to hear the plain and unadorned, 



54 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

but thoroughly earnest and pungent statement of 
evangelical truth, from men who believe what they 
say, so they will continue to like this style, and 
that the period of boned pi'eaching for the masses 
is over and gone. 



THE EVILS OF PULPIT NOTORIETY 

A secular journal moralizes over the confes- 
sion of a prominent witness in a certain trial, that 
in his younger days he worshipped great men, but 
that since he had come to know them better, he 
was "sick" of them. The journalist seems in his 
moralizing to make no distinction between the 
varieties of great men, but puts them all into one 
catalogue ; as Macbeth says that " hounds and grey- 
hounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, water- 
rugs, and demi-wolves, are cleped all by the name 
of dogs." He mentions Alexander, Caesar, Wash- 
ington, and Hamilton in connection with the par- 
ticular "great man" by whom this witness in his 
youthful and immature years had been dazzled, as 
if such a juxtaposition were not ridiculous. 

And yet this journalist is only repeating the 
vulgar error of confounding notoriety with fame. 
Because an individual happens to be the town-talk, 
unthinking persons suppose that he thereby goes 
into history, and becomes the theme of admiration 
for a nation, or for mankind. Nothing is easier 
than to get notoriety, and nothing is more difficult 



56 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

than to acquire fame. The arts that promote the 
former defeat the latter. He who would gain a last- 
ing reputation, in any department of human effort, 
must cultivate his powers so highly and exert them 
so conscientiously, as to preclude the indiscrimi- 
nating and noisy applause of a narrow circle of rela- 
tives, friends, and dependents. Notoriety always 
supposes more or less of personal acquaintance 
and relationship ; fame supposes none at all. A 
noted politician, or a noted actor, or a noted 
preacher, derives his reputation from the crowd 
that gathers about him when he makes a public 
appearance, and the celebrity which he enjoys is 
due to individual traits and peculiarities, more than 
to those solid excellences that remain the same for 
all time and under all circumstances. 

It is here that the evil influence of mere pulpit 
notoriety upon the church and society is apparent. 
The declamatory and sensational preacher gathers 
around him only a particular class. It is a class 
marked by defects that require to be removed 
rather than strengthened. They are commonly the 
very same defects which the preacher has himself. 
Like priest, like people. He abhors doctrine, and 
they abhor it. He talks metaphors, relates anec- 
dotes, and raises laughter, and they like metaphors, 
anecdotes, and laughter. He favors loose and 
easy-going ethics, and they enjoy the same. In 
this way, the preacher speedily becomes the " great 
man " of his congregation, and then 

" Like Cato gives his little senate laws, 
And sits attentive to his own applause." 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY $7 

The injurious effect of notoriety upon the indi- 
vidual himself who is so unfortunate as to have it 
is manifold. It is almost fatal to personal piety. 
The devout and saintly men in the history of the 
Church, have not been local celebrities. No deep 
and pure character is formed under the intoxicat- 
ing stimulus of a crowd of partisans. On the con- 
trary, infirm virtue, sad lapses, and great scandals 
are apt to come in connection with such influences. 
The effect upon the preacher in puffing him up 
with self-conceit is remarkable. It is very difficult 
for him to think others better than himself, and to 
condescend to men of low estate. Bolingbroke 
tells the story of a popular member of a French 
parliament who being overcome by his own elo- 
quence was overheard after his speech muttering 
devoutly to himself, "Lord, now lettest thou thy 
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen 
thy salvation." This extravagance in secular ora- 
tory can be matched in the records of ecclesiasti- 
cal. Some preachers have had as absurd notions 
of their own superiority as this French deputy had, 
and some congregations have been as crazy about 
their idol. 

It is a dark day for a church, and it betokens 
great spiritual decline when the people cease to 
be content with thoughtful, devout, and scriptu- 
ral teaching, and clamor for celebrated preachers. 
The demand will create the supply, and the church 
will be filled with declaimers and ecclesiastical 
charlatans. There will be no truly great men pro- 
duced ; and what is far worse no truly good men. 



58 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

There will be abundance of notoriety, but no fame ; 
and what is worse no piety. In thus foolishly and 
wickedly trying to find their life, both the preach- 
ers and the people will have lost it. 



OVERESTIMATED POPULARITY 

A very common way of defending heresy or 
error is to direct attention to its popularity. One 
preacher who departs from the evangelical faith is 
drawing a crowd, while another who proclaims the 
old and simple faith of the gospel has only an or- 
dinary audience, or perhaps a thin one. When the 
former is arraigned before the proper authorities, 
and is asked why he has violated his ordination 
vows, with many persons it is thought to be a 
conclusive answer to say that his church is crowded, 
and that the pews are all rented. The small au- 
dience of the orthodox minister is pointed at as 
proof that orthodoxy is antiquated and useless, 
and that the new doctrine is what the times de- 
mand. Public notoriety is thus made the criterion 
of Christianity. 

There are several fallacies in this popular judg- 
ment. One is in making notoriety the equivalent 
of reputation or fame. Macaulay says that Words- 
worth worked on in his own chosen line of poetic 
thought careless of contemporary opinion, " con- 
scious that he was unpopular, but certain that he 



6o ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

would be immortal." There were many local and 
temporary poetic reputations in Wordsworth's day 
that obscured his for the time being ; but this gen- 
eration has forgotten those celebrities, while the 
name of Wordsworth is one of the permanent in- 
fluences of England. 

But another fallacy relates to the fact of the 
popularity itself. Error is not so popular as is sup- 
posed or claimed. Take an example. The late 
Theodore Parker is said to have had an audience 
of two thousand persons, and this was often cited 
in proof of the immense popularity of infidelity 
in the city of Boston. But Parker was the only 
preacher of the sort, and preached only half a day. 
The edifice where he spoke was within easy reach 
of a million of people. Did it evince any very won- 
derful popularity of the preaching of Theodore 
Parker, that some two thousand persons out of a 
million were sufficiently interested to go and hear 
him? Put Parkerism to the same test that the 
gospel is put to, and see how it would fare. Sup- 
pose that there had been ten or twenty orators 
preaching "theism" within the radius of five miles, 
would there have been ten or twenty audiences 
each of two thousand persons? Parker had no 
brethren in the ministry. He was the only one 
of the species. He had all the hearers who 
wanted to hear this kind of doctrine. If he had 
been compelled to share his audience with a half- 
dozen others, he would have had a smaller follow- 
ing than the dullest and dryest of orthodox minis- 
ters. The popularity of a tenet is to be measured 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 6l 

by its reception by the great mass of the people ; 
by the number of those who proclaim it, and by 
the number of the audiences that rally to hear it. 
Because one man with one dancing bear gathers 
quite a crowd in the street, it does not follow that 
dancing bears are popular with the whole communi- 
ty. Multiply the bears, and they would immediately 
become unpopular. Increase the number of hereti- 
cal or infidel preachers, and their audience rooms 
would be deserted. There is not enough of vigor 
and vitality in error to bear repetition like ortho- 
doxy from a thousand pulpits and a thousand 
preachers. As it is, the errorist has no immedi- 
ate successor. Theodore Parker's congregation is 
scattered. Infidelity has no power of permanent 
growth or continuity. 

The same remark is true of those preachers 
who, though not sceptics like Parker, are lax and 
erroneous in their teachings. Their popularity also 
is overrated. The number in this class is small, 
compared with that large body of evangelical 
preachers and pastors who are expounding the 
Scriptures and proclaiming the one old doctrine 
of Paul and Peter. The number of persons who 
wish to hear them, is small compared with the 
whole body of devout and intelligent persons who 
make up the various evangelical denominations. 
A pulpit celebrity, with just enough of Biblical 
doctrine to clear him from the charge of infidelity, 
and more than enough of human error to make his 
preaching piquant and taking with a certain class, 
establishes himself in some metropolitan centre. 



62 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

He is alone, and has for his audience all of this 
"ilk" that can get around his pulpit. It is a 
large audience compared with each of the hundred 
audiences that are listening to gospel sermons 
within the same circumference of five or ten 
miles, and the hasty inference is drawn that this 
man and his doctrine is more popular than St. 
Paul would be, preaching such dogmas as are 
contained in the ninth chapter of his epistle to 
the Romans. But multiply this celebrity by ten, 
and see what the size of his audience would be. 

This overestimate of the popularity of error 
may be illustrated again by the theatre. There 
is considerable similarity between a sensational 
preacher and a celebrated actor. It will gener- 
ally be found that the talent of the former is 
largely histrionic. It is often remarked of such 
a one that he would make a good actor. Take 
away from him his power of mimicry and kindred 
gifts, and he would be shorn of much of his popu- 
lar talent. Now, as one sees a theatre pouring 
out its crowd at the close of the performance, he 
might infer that the great mass of the community 
are play-goers. But the fact is, that only a small 
minority of the entire population of even such a 
worldly city as New York habitually attend the 
theatre. While hundreds are listening to the actor, 
thousands are in the quiet and privacy of their 
homes. Ten or fifteen theatres suffice for a mill- 
ion of people. 

When, therefore, it is said in defence of lax and 
unevangelical preachers and preaching, that they 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 6$ 

draw a large audience, let the question be asked: 
How many large audiences -do they draw ? Of 
how many audiences, large or small, does this lax 
and unevangelical denomination consist ? Is it 
popular enough to be a denomination at all ? Or 
do its preachers and audiences live as parasites 
upon the evangelical denominations ? 



WIT AND HUMOR IN PREACHING 

The maxim that " ridicule is the test of truth " 
is attributed to the Earl of Shaftesbury. These 
particular words are not to be found in his writ- 
ings, but a sentiment resembling them can be. It 
is the maxim of the sceptic. Voltaire proceeded 
upon it, when he subjected the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity to a wit that has never been excelled for 
point and brilliancy. The infidel, generally, what- 
ever be the grade of his knowledge and culture, 
betakes himself to ridicule as an easy and ready 
method of attacking sacred things. What little 
influence Thomas Paine has exerted, is due to his 
coarse and racy derision ; and Theodore Parker 
will be remembered chiefly for his vigorous scoff- 
ing at truths which for ages have been enshrined 
in the reverence and affection of Christendom. 
But the maxim has never been accepted as cor- 
rect. If an opponent has nothing but ridicule to 
offer against a system, he will fail in overthrowing 
it, because the human intellect demands reasons 
and reasoning as the ground of its decisions. The 
wages of a joke is a laugh, and of a great joke a 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 65 

horse-laugh ; but the human understanding craves 
arguments. Men may enjoy the keenness and in- 
genuity of the witticism, but will not allow their 
opinions to be determined by it, unless they are 
shallow-pates and triners themselves ; for it is im- 
mediately perceived that there is nothing that can- 
not be ridiculed. Even the august and awful 
being of God may be converted into a subject of 
derision, provided there be no reverence in man 
to deter him from blasphemy. Even the sad ex- 
periences of human life ; sickness, suffering, and 
death itself ; may have a ridiculous aspect put 
upon them, provided there be no decency and no 
shame to prevent. 

Conceding, then, the falsity of the maxim in 
this form of statement, how stands the case with 
its converse? May we say that " ridicule is the 
test of error ? " Error, unquestionably, has a side 
that is intrinsically contemptible. This is one of 
the points of difference between right and wrong, 
truth and falsehood. There is nothing really and 
truly despicable, and so worthy of scorn and deri- 
sion, in either the good, the true, or the beautiful. 
But in their contraries there is nothing that is not 
deserving of ridicule and contempt. Hence, to 
subject error to wit is to subject it to a legitimate 
test. This is by no means the only test. The 
chief dependence in this instance, also, must be 
placed upon logic. Error must be reasoned out 
of existence. Men demand arguments when 
they are asked to give up opinions which are 
dear to their self-love and corruption of heart. 
5 



66 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Still, after the strong and cogent reasons have 
been presented, it is right and proper to pour in 
upon the exploded falsehood the flame of sarcasm, 
and burn it up as under a compound blow-pipe. 
The Scriptures themselves, though sparing in their 
use of this quality, do nevertheless employ it. 
There is no moral scorn more contemptuous and 
withering than that which fills the ridicule which 
Elijah, under the divine afflatus, poured upon the 
priests of Baal, unless it be that which Isaiah ex- 
pends upon the manufacturers of idols. 

But the maxim that " ridicule is the test of 
error " needs to be cautiously used ; and it is to 
press this point that all our previous remarks have 
been made. Wit is good only in connection with 
logic. Alone, and by itself, it is like faith with- 
out works. For all purposes of conviction, "it is 
dead, being alone." When, therefore, the writer 
or speaker neglects instruction and argumentation, 
and overflows with light and laughable matter, he 
will accomplish little in actually confirming the 
good principles, or eradicating the evil principles 
of his readers or hearers. Leviathan is not so 
tamed. Here is the defect in much of the attack 
which the newspaper nowadays makes upon crime. 
We have been struck and saddened by the tenor 
of this species of writing. The crime, instead of 
being: discussed and condemned with seriousness 
and earnestness as offence against both human and 
divine law, and against the best interests of so- 
ciety, is merely held up to ridicule. It is not de- 
fended, of course ; but the impression that is made 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 6j 

is that the criminal was a simpleton, a fellow 
without brain enough to keep himself out of 
trouble. If any one will look over the files and 
read what has been published in the journals of 
this city respecting the late notorious assassina- 
tion, he will understand our meaning. There is a 
strange and mournful absence of high-minded rea- 
soning and solemn denunciation. 

The pulpit is not altogether free from the same 
charge. A certain class of preachers rely more 
upon wit and ridicule than upon reason and argu- 
ment. Their audiences expect to be amused, and 
should they be disappointed in their expectations 
for any considerable length of time, would fall off. 
Hence, preachers of this order work the vein of 
mirth and ridicule. It is a dangerous trade ; as 
dangerous as that of Shakspeare's gatherer of 
samphire. For no just, true, and complete view 
of truth is given by this method ; and even the 
view given of error is oftentimes unfair, and al- 
ways inadequate and feeble. Men cannot be 
laughed or ridiculed out of sin, if for no other 
reason than that laughter is only a movement of 
the diaphragm. Bodily exercise profiteth little. 



THE CREDULITY OF INFIDELITY 

It is a remark of Pascal, one of the most sub- 
tle and discriminating minds, that nothing is more 
credulous than infidelity. This seems to be a para- 
dox, but its truth is frequently proved by actual 
examples. One has recently come to our notice 
in the case of Robert Dale Owen. This, in some 
respects, well-meaning man was a disbeliever in 
divine revelation, and yet became the dupe of an 
impudent and unblushing pretender to supernat- 
ural power. He did not think the miracles of 
the Bible to be supported by sufficient evidence, 
yet placed credit in the impostures of the Holmes 
mediums. That he might not miss any of the 
revelations, he went to Philadelphia to reside, and 
pinned his faith in a future immortality not upon 
the words of Jesus Christ but of Katie King. 
When this woman confessed that she had con- 
spired with others to impose upon him and others 
like-minded with him, and that she was no spirit, 
but a woman with flesh and bones like other mor- 
tals, Owen was so overcome with the disclosure 
that his reason reeled and he became insane. 

Looking at the facts in this case, it is easy to 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 6g 

see that the sceptic is more credulous than the 
Christian. Owen believed what the great major- 
ity disbelieved. This is one mark of credulity. 
The little coterie in Philadelphia who trusted Katie 
King's assertions, were a handful compared with 
the great multitude of Philadelphians who put no 
faith in her revelations. The masses of Philadel- 
phia believed the Biblical miracles and rejected 
those of the spiritualist. Owen made his choice 
between the supernaturalism of infidelity and that 
of Christianity, and in accepting the former went 
with the credulous minority rather than with the 
believing majority. When our Lord wrought mir- 
acles in Jerusalem he carried the majority with 
him. The believers, in this instance, were not a 
handful, but the whole city in a mass. Only a small 
party, the Pharisees and the rulers who hated him 
and his doctrine, endeavored to stem the tide that 
was coming in by suggesting that he cast out devils 
by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. Even they 
did not dispute the fact of the miracle. In refer- 
ence to the greatest of the miracles, the resurrection 
of Lazarus, the Pharisees were compelled to give up 
the contest in despair, saying, " Perceive ye how ye 
prevail nothing ? behold the world is gone after him." 
Again, in making such a choice, Owen selected 
that species of supernaturalism which had been 
tried at best only a few weeks, and rejected that 
species which had been tried for nineteen cen- 
turies. Katie King had been seen in the twilight 
and in the dark by a small number. The Chris- 
tian revelation had been the study in broad day of 



70 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

a multitude whom no man can number. The 
sceptical supernaturalism, moreover, had produced 
no beneficial results. It never built a hospital or 
a college ; it never remodelled a human charac- 
ter ; it never constructed any respectable form of 
human society. The Biblical supernaturalism, be- 
yond all dispute, has made the world better. Yet 
Owen, the philanthropist, who really desired to 
promote the physical well-being of men, chose the 
former and rejected the latter. If this is not cre- 
dulity of the extreme type, tell us what is. 

Faith in the Biblical miracle is more easy and 
natural than faith in the human supernaturalism, 
or " spiritualism" as it is called. That a being 
like Jesus Christ, so pure, so holy, so elevated in 
his spirit, so benignant in his feelings and so bene- 
ficent in his actions, should work a miracle is high- 
ly probable. The miracle seems natural to him. 
We should be surprised, if he never by any act or 
word had shown that he was connected with a 
higher world than this. But that Mohammed, for 
example, a man so cruel and bloody in war, and so 
lustful in life, should have supernatural power over 
matter and physical life is utterly improbable. It 
is unnatural to suppose that wickedness should 
possess omnipotence. " Can a devil open the 
eyes of the blind?" John 10:21. 

There is still another reason why faith in the 
human supernaturalism is mere credulity. That 
there should be supernatural power exerted in 
Philadelphia in the year 1874 by a circle of men 
and women is altogether improbable, because 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY Jl 

there has been no preparation for it. There have 
been no antecedents like prophecy and pre-an- 
nounced miracles. It is not a part of a system. 
It is isolated. It is like lightning from a clear 
sky which, though abstractly possible, is yet very 
rare and improbable. The supernaturalism of 
Christianity was prepared for and expected for 
long years. The whole line of Jewish history 
looked towards the incarnation of the Son of God, 
and the miracles of the Jewish Messiah. Proph- 
ecy had foretold it, and even the vague expecta- 
tions of paganism were waiting for the Desire of 
all nations. When, therefore, a man like Owen 
puts confidence in this unheralded supernatural- 
ism, and rejects that which has been foretold and 
prepared for, he is acting the part of a credulous 
dupe. Simeon and Anna, like all the spiritual 
readers and students of the Old Testament, had 
been waiting for the Consolation of Israel ; but 
Owen and others like him did not stand expect- 
ing for many long years the fulfilment of an an- 
tecedent prophecy, in the outburst of the super- 
naturalism which they believed themselves to have 
witnessed. There was no reason why they should 
expect it. There had been no communication 
from God through prophets announcing the com- 
ing miracle, and there had been no miraculous 
line of events going before. The faith of Owen 
in such circumstances was sheer credulity. It had 
no ground in history, no support in preceding 
events. No wonder that instead of the nunc dim- 
ittis there was the dreadful eclipse of insanity. 



INFIDELITY SEEKS A SIGN FROM HEAVEN 

The amount and kind of evidence for the truth 
of the Christian religion depends upon the will 
of its Author, and not upon the will of man. It 
is for God to say how many miracles shall be 
wrought to evince the credibility of the gospel, 
and it is not for the ruined creature for whose de- 
liverance the gospel is provided, to demand more 
miracles than have been worked. If the evidences 
of divine revelation were to be made to depend 
upon the wishes and caprices of men, miracles 
would of necessity become the natural order of 
things, for every generation would clamor for its 
own portion, and every man would insist upon 
an ocular demonstration for himself. The Deity 
would thus be made subject to all the unbelief 
and hardness of heart so natural to apostate hu- 
man nature, and would be forced to wait upon his 
sceptical creatures as a servant upon the master. 
The sovereignty and majesty of God would be 
overthrown, and instead of that august Being 
"who giveth not account of any of his matters," 
there would be a deity, if such he might be called, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 73 

who would be continually giving an account, and 
always standing in an apologetic attitude. 

This is the attitude in which such sceptics as 
Renan and Tyndall would place the Supreme Ruler 
of the universe. The French unbeliever insists that, 
in order that the present generation may have 
sufficient reason for believing the gospel narrative 
of the resurrection of Lazarus, the miracle should 
be repeated. A committee of the French Insti- 
tute should be appointed, who should examine the 
corpse to be scientifically certain that it is really 
a corpse ; then the resurrection should be per- 
formed in presence of the committee, and such 
other witnesses as they should appoint, in order 
that there might be no sleight of hand, and then 
the report of the savans should be communicated 
to the public. The English materialist, in a differ- 
ent form, makes a similar proposition. The effi- 
cacy of prayer isto be tested by the experiment 
of praying for the patients in one hospital, and 
not praying for those of another, both hospitals 
meanwhile, employing the same physicians and the 
same mode of treatment. If those who are in the 
first-mentioned hospital are healed, and those in 
the second are not, prayer, says Mr. Tyndall, will 
be proved to be efficacious. But should this actu- 
ally be the result, should all in the first-mentioned 
hospital be cured, this would be the performance 
of a miracle in answer to prayer. This proposi- 
tion, therefore, of Tyndall is in reality a demand 
that God work another miracle in addition to 
those he has previously wrought. The fact that 



74 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

it is to be wrought in answer to the prayers of 
Christians, instead of in answer to the demand of 
an unbeliever like Renan, makes no difference in 
the principle that is involved. Both proposals 
alike imply that God shall give additional evi- 
dence of the truth of his revelation whenever it is 
demanded, and that the amount and kind of it 
is to be determined by the creature rather than 
the Creator. 

The spirit that prompts such demands upon God 
for more miraculous proof of his truth than he has 
already given, is not a new thing under the sun. 
A personage of some distinction exhibited it, when 
he said to Jesus Christ upon the pinnacle of the 
temple : " If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself 
down, for it is written, He shall give his angels 
charge concerning thee, and in their hands they 
shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against 
a stone." This was a demand, made by Satan, in 
a roundabout manner, through the Messiah, that 
God work a miracle in proof of the divinity of 
the gospel. The same spirit animated those Phari- 
sees who " began to question with Christ, seeking 
of him a sign from heaven, tempting him." Mark 
8:11. The unbelieving "brethren" of our Lord 
were actuated by this same unbelieving temper, 
which lusts after more miracles and stronger 
proofs than God is pleased to give to his creatures, 
when they said to him, " Depart hence, and go 
into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the 
works that thou doest. If thou do these things, 
show thyself to the world." John 7:3-5. And 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 75 

the same spirit flamed out at the crucifixion of the 
Son of God, when the " chief priests, mocking 
him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved 
others; himself he cannot save. If he be the 
King of Israel let him now come down from the 
cross, and we will believe in him." Matt. 27:41, 
42. These enemies of Christ, standing beneath 
the cross, made the same promise that the modern 
enemies of Christ are making: "Give us another 
miracle, and we will believe the gospel. Furnish 
us more evidence of the truth of Christianity, and 
we will accept it." 

The manner in which Jesus Christ treated such 
demands for more miraculous proofs of the divin- 
ity of his mission shows the nature of the demand, 
and his estimate of it. In the instance of the Sa- 
tanic proposal, he repelled it with a quotation from 
the Word of God. In the instance of the Pharisaic 
demand, " He sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, 
Why doth this generation seek after a sign ? Ver- 
ily, I say unto you, there shall no sign be given un- 
to this generation." And when the last demand 
of this kind was made, as he hung upon the cross, 
he gave no answer, and his silence was more sig- 
nificant than even his words could have been. 

The root of this requisition upon God for more 
evidence than he has been pleased to give of 
the truth of Christianity is pronged. It has two 
forks. One is unbelief, and the other is irrever- 
ence. Men are inclined to doubt the gospel from 
a variety of motives, the chief of which is a dislike 
of its purity. This inclination they take no pains 



J6 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

to weaken, but, on the contrary, they strengthen 
it, some by their studies, and some by their prac- 
tices. In this state of mind they clamor for more 
proof, although they have not fairly weighed the 
amount of evidence already furnished. And 
coupled with this is an irreverent spirit. They 
are not impressed by the Divine majesty. They 
forget their insignificance and nothingness when 
compared with God, and presume to dictate the 
mode and manner in which he shall authenticate 
his revelation to mankind. 

The claim that every age should have new mir- 
acles in proof of the Christian religion, would 
be like the claim that every age should have 
the right to reopen a case which was settled in 
court in a past age, upon sufficient testimony. 
It is a maxim in law, that a criminal shall be 
tried for an offence only once. If testimony suf- 
ficent to acquit him has been presented at his trial, 
and he is acquitted, this ends the matter. He is 
dismissed as an innocent person forever after. In 
like manner, testimony for the truth of the Bibli- 
cal miracles cannot be continually furnished dur- 
ing all time. It must come from the original 
eye - witnesses and from them only. It would 
be absurd to attempt to manufacture new eye- 
witnesses. And such is the absurdity, when 
Renan and Tyndall demand that the miraculous 
evidence for the divinity of Christianity which ac- 
companied its beginning should be repeated to 
meet their doubts, and that they, in this way, 
should be made additional eye-witnesses, and so 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY J7 

fall into the same class with the prophets and 
apostles as attestors to the truth of the Christian 
religion. "Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus 
istis, tempus eget." Stillingfleet (Origines Sacrse, 
Bk. II. Ch. x.) thus argues against the demand 
of the infidel that new miracles shall be wrought 
to overcome his unbelief : " The truth of God's 
testimony to his revelation was sufficiently sealed 
at the time of the delivery of it, and is conveyed 
down in a certain way to us. Is it not sufficient 
that the charter of a corporation had the prince's 
broad seal in the time of giving it, but that every 
succession of men in that corporation must have 
a new broad seal, or else they ought to ques- 
tion their patent ? What ground can there be 
for that, when the original seal and patent is 
preserved, and is certainly conveyed down from 
age to age? So, I say, it is as to us. God's 
grand charter of grace and mercy to the world 
through Jesus Christ, was sealed by Divine mir- 
acles at the delivery of it to the world ; the 
original patent, namely, the Scriptures, wherein 
the charter is contained, is conveyed in a most cer- 
tain manner to us ; to this patent the seal is an- 
nexed, and in it are contained those undoubted 
miracles which were wrought in confirmation of it ; 
so that a new sealing of this patent is wholly need- 
less, unless we have some cause of suspicion that 
the original patent itself were lost, or that the 
first sealing was not true. If the latter, then 
the Christian religion is not true if the miracles 
wrought for confirmation of it were false ; be- 



78 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

cause the truth of it depends so much on the 
verity and divinity of the miracles which were 
then wrought. If the first be suspected, namely, 
the certain conveyance of the patent, namely, the 
Scriptures, some sure grounds for such a suspicion 
must be produced by the sceptic in a matter of 
such great moment, especially when the great and 
numerous societies of the Christian world do all 
concur unanimously in the contrary." 



THE HASTY INFERENCES OF INFIDELITY 

In the recent attempt to prove that the human 
race have a much longer antiquity than the Bible 
teaches, great ignorance of very common and well- 
established sources of information is sometimes 
exhibited. The reader of any of the usual histo- 
ries which describe savage or semi-civilized races 
often finds that the use of stone in lieu of iron or 
other metals, is a custom that does not imply very 
great antiquity in the rude population so employ- 
ing it. The American Indian, at the time of the 
first settlement of the United States, still shaped 
the flint into arrow-heads and spear-heads. His 
ancestors before him had done so from time im- 
memorial ; but that time immemorial, in the in- 
stance of the Indian, would not run back, proba- 
bly, so far as the age in which Herodotus wrote. 
For all the indications go to show that the West- 
ern continent was not peopled until after the 
Eastern had been over-populated. But the mod- 
ern theorist, in his eagerness to prove the untrust- 
worthiness of Scripture, would have us believe 
that the stone age, as he calls it, antedates all his- 
tory, both secular and sacred. 



80 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

We have been interested in a curious refuta- 
tion of this which is furnished by the historian 
Gibbon — a writer who certainly cannot be charged 
with partiality for revealed truth, or any desire to 
establish it upon an unassailable foundation. Read- 
ers of the recent treatises upon the antiquity of man, 
will remember how much is made of the so-called 
lacustrine dwellings. In Switzerland, and other 
parts of Europe, remains have been discovered, at 
the outlets or inlets of lakes, of piles driven into 
the morass, and of the huts which were built upon 
them. The inhabitants seem to have been a rude 
and savage race who dwelt partly upon the land, 
and partly upon the water, and so constructed 
their dwellings that they might have ready access 
to either. They may have adopted this method as 
the first founders of Venice did, in order to be 
secure from the attacks of their enemies from the 
land. Or they might have wished to render the 
taking of fish, which was their principal food, 
more easy. Many reasons might be conjectured 
for such a species of habitation, and no one, cer- 
tainly, would have seen in such a phenomenon any 
evidence of a pre-Adamite life antedating all his- 
tory. Even at the present day, there are tribes in 
Eastern Asia and in South America who adopt 
the very same method, in order to escape the in- 
conveniences of those inundations which overflow 
vast tracts of alluvial territory. 

In the forty-second chapter of the Decline and 
Fall, Gibbon describes the incursion of the Bul- 
garians, or, as they have been more popularly 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 8 1 

called, the Huns, into the regions this side of the 
Danube. Before entering upon the description of 
their devastating march, he gives some account 
of their manners and way of life in their home on 
the plains of Russia, Lithuania, and Poland. He 
tells us that " four thousand six hundred villages 
were scattered over the provinces of Russia and 
Poland, and their huts were hastily built of rough 
timber, in a country deficient both in stone and 
iron. Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth 
of forests, on the banks of rivers, or the edge of 
morasses, we may not perhaps without flattery 
compare them to the architecture of the beaver ; 
which they resembled in a double issue to the land 
and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitant, 
an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social 
than that marvellous quadruped." Now this will 
answer equally well for the description of the 
Swiss lake dwellings, which have been cited in 
proof that there was a primitive man in the heart 
of Europe long before Adam was made out of the 
dust of the ground. The lacustrine dwellings 
of the Bulgarian Sclaves were almost identically 
the same with those of the dwellers among the 
Alps. Nay, the builders of the Swiss structures 
very possibly may have been descendants of those 
Huns who when they crossed the Danube were 
never entirely driven back to their old home in 
Russia. But Gibbon attributes no very great an- 
tiquity to these barbarous men. The incursion 
over the Danube, which he describes, began in 

the reign of Justinian, who died A. D. 565. 
6 



82 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Some three or four centuries may be allowed for 
their residence in Russia previous to the over- 
population which impelled them to move west- 
ward, and then we should not be forced backward 
into time even as far as the advent of our Lord. 
This is the reckoning and chronology of Edward 
Gibbon ; a scholar with whose learning that of a 
writer like Lubbock is not to be compared for a 
moment. 

The characteristic of the recent attack upon the 
credibility of Scripture history is, hasty inference 
from ill-understood facts. There is ignorance or 
else superficial knowledge in the start, and then a 
headlong deduction which is inspired more by the 
wish of the theorist than by calm reason. That a 
race of barbarians should live in huts built upon 
piles, was for the mind of Gibbon no such very 
extraordinary phenomenon in the history of man 
as to suggest that it must have been a race differ- 
ent from any that have lived since the historical 
period. He never dreamed of postulating an im- 
mense antiquity for it. But a theorizer who has 
a point to carry, finds in it evidence sufficient to 
overthrow the chronology of Revelation, which is 
the chronology of Christian literature and science, 
in distinction from Pagan and Infidel. 



STEREOTYPED ERRORS OF INFIDELITY 

A periodical circulating among mechanics and 
artisans, in a recent number, contains an article 
in the interest of infidelity, which reiterates cer- 
tain misstatements that have been made so long 
that the correction of them seems to be useless. 
The writer says that the strife between conserva- 
tism and progress has been going on from time 
immemorial. The former is represented by the- 
ology, the later by science. Science has been op- 
posed by theology, and the following illustrations 
are given : 

i. " There was a time when the whole human 
race considered our earth to be a flat, and to con- 
sist of three connected continents, Europe, Asia 
and Africa. The ancient astronomers who an- 
nounced the rotundity of the earth were contra- 
dicted by the theological priests. But ultimately 
science prevailed, and conservative theology had 
to acknowledge that it had been wrong." The 
erroneous geography which the writer describes is 
that of Homer and Herodotus. There is no evi- 
dence that either of these authors came in conflict 



84 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

with " astronomers who announced the rotundity 
of the earth," or that the pagan priests did. This 
theory was held generally in Greece and Rome 
without molestation. But the writer probably 
refers to the modern discussions respecting the 
sphericity of the earth. In this instance, there 
was a difference of opinion upon both sides. 
Some of the theologians agreed with some of 
the astronomers in thinking that the old geogra- 
phy was erroneous ; and some of the astronomers 
themselves agreed with some of the theologians 
in holding to the old view. Neither the "con- 
servatism" nor the "progress" was all upon one 
side. The doctrine of the rotundity of the earth 
was the result of a great discussion in which all 
the learned took a part, and until the matter was 
settled beyond dispute there was as much heated 
debate amongst the astronomers as amongst the 
theologians. 

2. "Next came the doctrine of the motion of 
the earth." The writer, of course, weeps the cus- 
tomary tear over Galileo. Though the doctrine 
"was condemned as ungodly by the whole Chris- 
tian priesthood, Protestant as well as Roman 
Catholic, and this good man was compelled to 
swear to the falsehoods of the priests, yet pro- 
gressive science was again victorious over conserva- 
tive theology." The Protestant church had noth- 
ing at all to do with the persecution of Galileo. 
And the Papal church as a whole cannot be said 
to have taken ground against him. It was a quar- 
rel between a party in that church and Galileo. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 85 

He had offended the Jesuits, and this influential 
body in the Italian diocese, it is true, attempted to 
force his opinions. But in France and Germany, 
there was much agreement with Galileo in the 
scientific circles of the Papal church. He had 
adopted the views of Copernicus, who is the 
real father of the modern astronomy, and not 
Galileo. The views of Copernicus had already 
obtained considerable currency in Papal Europe. 
This great genius, who refuted the Ptolemaic as- 
tronomy and announced that which goes under 
his name, and which Galileo adopted from him, 
lived and died in the Papal church. He pub- 
lished his great work at the urgent request of a 
Papal cardinal, and dedicated it by permission to 
the Pope himself (Paul III.). That it should 
meet with opposition from some of the astrono- 
mers and theologians was to be expected. A new 
theory cannot be adopted by everybody at once. 
But Copernicus was not persecuted in the least 
by the Papal see, and the Protestant church was 
just coming into existence when his work was 
published in 1543. 

3. "Afterwards," continues the writer, "came 
the doctrine of the great antiquity of the earth, 
which geology compelled the theologians to con- 
cede, who previously held that the globe was only 
six thousand years old, and was made in six days." 
The theologians were in advance of the physicists 
here. Augustine, long before the time of geology, 
interpreted the first chapter of Genesis as teaching 
an original creation of chaotic matter, ages upon 



86 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ages ago, and then its subsequent formation and 
arrangement in the six days' work, which he de- 
nominated " God-divided days," or periods. Ori- 
gen, still earlier than Augustine, went so far as to 
hold to an eternal creation of the universe, which 
would make it older than even the geologists 
make it. 

4. Next, this advocate of science versus theol- 
ogy asserts "that there is evidence that man has 
existed at least one hundred thousand years upon 
the earth," and that theology will be forced to 
yield this point, though it has not yet done it. 
Upon this, we have two remarks to make. First, 
the theologian is not persecuting the physicist for 
his statement. We have not heard that anybody 
has been burnt at the stake for holding this view. 
Secondly, the evidence, at the present writing, 
that man has existed one hundred thousand years 
upon the earth, is infinitesimal. That there will 
be sufficient found hereafter to demonstrate the 
fact, and that the theologian will be forced to ad- 
mit it, is only a prophecy. But there is no logic 
against prophecy. We cannot reason with a 
soothsayer. 

And finally, the writer assures his readers that 
the doctrine of evolution is destined to overthrow 
the theological doctrines of a difference between 
mind and matter, and of an original perfection 
in man and a subsequent fall and degradation. 
This, too, like the preceding, is vaticination, and 
might be dismissed as such. In respect, however, 
to the alleged fact of the development of inor- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 87 

ganic into organic matter, of the non-vital into 
the vital, and of animal sensation into thought, 
we will close with a single remark. If evolution 
really is a law and process of nature, it ought to 
be as uniform and invariable as any other law and 
process, say gravitation, and there ought to be 
thousands and millions of instances of it. But as 
yet there is not a single solitary instance. Dar- 
win's pigeons are pigeons still. A mere theory, 
which has for its support nothing in the least de- 
gree approximating to the uniformity and univer- 
sality that are demanded and exhibited in the in- 
stance of acknowledged laws of nature, is not 
scientific, but ridiculous. Any real and actual 
law of nature cannot be put under a bushel. It 
must show itself upon a grand scale, as constantly 
going on. Instead, therefore, of being compelled 
to ransack all nature for an instance in which one 
real species has developed into another real species, 
and not finding a single instance, the "scientist" 
ought to have found the instances crowding and 
multiplying upon him. Before he broached a 
theory which is as revolutionary and destructive 
of all past science as red republicanism is of social 
order, he ought to have discovered at least a few 
instances in which the grain of sand becomes vital 
protoplasm ; in which the vegetable seed becomes 
the egg of animal life ; in which the anthropoid ape 
is transformed into a human being. 



THE EFFRONTERY OF INFIDELITY 

The friend and biographer of Strauss describes 
the Glaubenslehre of this writer as doing for 
Christianity what the balance-sheet does for a mer- 
cantile firm. It shows what the assets are ; how 
much the concern is actually worth after the bad 
debts and depreciated or damaged goods are sub- 
tracted. The Christian religion, according to 
Strauss, contains a good many legendary materials 
like the monkish chronicles of the middle ages, a 
good many contradictions, and a great man]/ state- 
ments contrary to reason and the five senses, and 
to physical science. It is the business of a phi- 
losopher to sift out this chaff and show the few 
kernels of wheat that are left. Christianity con- 
tains some grains o.f truth, and it is the object of 
Strauss's critique to exhibit them. 

It is not necessary to say that Strauss's balance- 
sheet shows but few assets for the religion of Christ, 
as it is presented in the four Gospels. This wide- 
spread religion, which has so unaccountably suc- 
ceeded in getting the ^lobe under its intellectual 
and moral influence, is substantially bankrupt. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 89 

But how is the balance-sheet to be made out ? 
Much depends upon this. In determining the 
value of depreciated stock, the merchant has an 
undisputed and certain rule of measurement. The 
current price at which it sells in market is a guide 
which all parties will accept. By what measuring 
rule does our critic estimate the assets of Christi- 
anity ? Has he one that is as trustworthy and ac- 
curate as that of the mercantile cashier ? 

According to Zeller (the biographer of whom 
we have spoken), Strauss adopts the Hegelian phi- 
losophy as " the rule and measure " by which 
everything in the Christian religion is to be tested 
and tried. He has no doubts about the credibility 
of Hegelianism. His faith in this German, whose 
breath was in his nostrils, being born in 1770 and 
dying in 1831, is implicit. He does not begin his 
examination of Christianity by first demonstrating 
the trustworthiness of the rule of measurement 
which he is going to use, but he assumes this as 
axiomatic and indisputable. 

We have here an instance of the remarkable ef- 
frontery of infidelity. Upon presenting himself 
before the public, the opponent of the infallibility 
of Jesus Christ begins by asking the public to con- 
cede the infallibility of George William Frederick 
Hegel. Nothing is scientific, says Strauss, but 
the Absolute and Unconditioned. Every system 
must be tested, not by relative and partial truth, 
but by the pure reason itself freed from all preju- 
dice and prepossessions. We must not look at 
Christianity in the light of our moral intuitions, of 



90 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

our education at our mothers' knees, or of our per- 
sonal needs and wants in times of sorrow or fear. 
The mere feelings of men, women, and children 
are no test of the truth of a system. We must 
dismiss all feeling, and look at the four Gospels 
with a calm and dispassionate intellect. We must 
judge Christianity by an absolute standard. 

And this absolute standard is the Hegelian phi- 
losophy. Our readers perhaps will think that we 
are hardly doing justice to a writer who has made 
so much noise in the world as David Frederick 
Strauss. Such a barefaced begging of the question, 
they will think, he could not be guilty of. But 
we assure them that there is no misrepresentation 
here. Hegel, without any word of explanation or 
attempt to justify the postulate, is set up in the 
very beginning as the authority by which Christi- 
anity is to be tested. He is to make out the bal- 
ance-sheet, and determine what the assets really 
are. His system of philosophy is the sum and re- 
sult of all anterior systems, containing all that is 
true in them, and excluding all that is false, and is 
so far in advance of them all as to be the solution 
of all problems, and the key to all knowledge. This 
is what is claimed for the philosophy in question. 
And Strauss, who cannot believe a miracle, can be- 
lieve this. Ask him if Jesus Christ is omniscient, 
and holds the key of all knowledge, as well as the 
keys of death and hell, and he answers, No. Ask 
him who does hold the key, and he replies that He- 
gel does. Hegel is in effect the Absolute, because 
he is the author of the philosophy of the Absolute. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY $1 

It is pleasant to be informed. There has been 
much inquiry respecting the Absolute. Some have 
denied that there is any such idea or reality. Oth- 
ers have asserted that there is, but that it cannot 
be known. The question is settled by Strauss. 
He who knew the Absolute lived in Berlin, and 
was professor in the university there. 

It is difficult to treat such a claim as this of 
Strauss, in respect to Hegelianism, with serious- 
ness. With all his errors, that remarkable and 
powerful thinker who has given his name to the 
most closely concatenated system in modern his- 
tory, would never have thought of setting up such 
a claim. His own attitude toward Christ and 
Christianity, though not that of Newton or Pascal, 
was far from being like that of Strauss. He never 
arrogated so much for himself. It is the height 
of absurdity, to set up human reason as it exists in 
a single individual man as the measure and test 
of all truth, Christianity included. The elder and 
more respectable Rationalists never did this. They 
maintained, it is true, that reason is the test of all 
truth, but then it was reason as found in a multi- 
tude of men, and not in one man only. They 
would appeal to the consensus of reason, as seen in 
various systems, and in all ages. But Strauss is 
much less reasonable than Rationalism, in placing 
all truth at the mercy of one human mind, and a 
single human system. 

The proper feeling toward such a claim as that 
made by Strauss, in his critique of Christianity, is 
that of contempt. When a single human intellect 



92 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

is proposed as the infallible norm and test, and the 
demand is made that we subject our views of 
Christ and Christianity to it, we take a lesson from 
the old East Indians. When Alexander the Great 
was overrunning India, he sent messengers to a 
certain Indian tribe, demanding that they acknowl- 
edge him to be a god. The sturdy savages sent 
back the contemptuous answer : "If Alexander 
wants to be a god, let him be a god." 



THE MEANNESS OF INFIDELITY 

It is reported that a celebrated infidel once said 
that if St. Paul should personally and upon his 
word of honor assure him that the gospel is true, 
he would believe him, " for," said he, "St. Paul was 
such a gentleman ! " We believe that Christianity 
can accept this compliment. The Christian is the 
highest style of man, and of course he is a gentle- 
man. " Be courteous," is one of the injunctions 
of Scripture. But Christianity cannot return the 
compliment to Infidelity. From some cause or 
other, scepticism is lacking in that sincere, upright, 
and honorable spirit which lies at the foundation 
of a gentlemanly nature. 

We have had this fact forced upon our notice 
in reading the autobiography of the late John 
Stuart Mill, and we propose to mention some 
particulars that illustrate it. The father of John 
Mill was James Mill, the author of the History of 
British India. He was the son of a Scotch Pres- 
byterian, and when a boy was recommended by his 
abilities to the notice of a nobleman whose wife had 
established a fund in the University of Edinburgh 



94 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

for educating young men for the Scottish Church. 
James Mill "went through the usual course of 
study and was licensed as a preacher, but never 
followed the profession, having satisfied himself 
that he could not believe the doctrines of that or 
any other church." Through his whole after life 
he was a disbeliever not merely of the truths of 
Christianity, but of those of natural religion. The 
creed of the deist, who believes in the existence 
of a God, and in the distinction between right and 
wrong, was more than he could adopt. His son 
tells us that his position was as nearly that of athe- 
ism as anything. He taught that son that religion 
is not merely a "mental delusion," but a "great 
moral evil." He impressed upon the recipient 
mind of his child, "that the manner in which the 
world came into existence is a subject on which 
nothing is known ; that the question, Who made 
me ? cannot be answered, because we have no ex- 
perience or authentic information from which to 
answer it ; and that any answer only throws the 
difficulty a step further back, since the question 
immediately presents itself, Who made God?" 
What we wish to bring into distinct notice, in 
connection with this infidelity, is the fact that the 
education which enabled James Mill to obtain a 
respectable position in the East India House, and 
which laid the foundation of his success in life, as 
well as that of his son after him, was given to him 
by Christianity. He was started in life by the 
funds of devout piety, and he was afterward main- 
tained in life by the patronage of an institution 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 95 

which, to say the least, was nominally Christian. 
Yet he never acknowledged this indebtedness to a 
religion which he rejected and reviled. It is fair 
to suppose that if the elder Mill, after the decided 
change in his views from belief to infidelity, had 
felt himself in honor bound to return the amount 
which he had received from an endowment de- 
voted to the preparation of students for the Scot- 
tish Church, and had so done, his son would have 
mentioned the fact. This is an illustration of what 
we call the meanness of infidelity. 

Again, we learn from this autobiography that 
the elder Mill taught the younger to conceal his 
scepticism, in order not to injure his worldly pros- 
pects. " In giving me an opinion contrary to that 
of the world, my father," he says, "thought it neces- 
sary to give it as one which could not prudently 
be avowed to the world." The son thinks that 
this was attended with some disadvantages, but the 
absence of a sincere reverence for what is believed 
to be truth, and a readiness to die if need be for 
it, is not mentioned as one of them. Indeed, he 
apologizes for his father's concealment of his in- 
fidel opinions, because at that day they were ex- 
ceedingly unpopular. But at the present time, he 
says, "the great advance in liberty of discussion 
has greatly altered the moralities of the question," 
and he thinks that his father, if living now, would 
not practice or inculcate the concealment of 
sceptical opinions, "unless in the cases, becoming 
fewer every day, in which frankness on these sub- 
jects would either risk the loss of the means of 



96 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

subsistence, or would amount to exclusion from 
some sphere of usefulness peculiarly suitable to 
the capacities of the individual " (Autobiography, 
p. 45). The son acted afterward upon this prin- 
ciple when he became a candidate for Parliament. 
He frankly answered all questions respecting his 
political views, but announced from the beginning 
that he would answer no questions relating to his 
religious opinions. If John Stuart Mill had been 
as explicit upon the hustings in his denunciation 
of the religion and morals that have made England 
what it is, as he is in some paragraphs of this Au- 
tobiography, his election, even by the highly- 
excited and radical constituency that placed him 
in Parliament for a brief season, would have been 
impossible. And this he well knew. 

We do not think that there is in all literature a 
more repulsive instance of a mean and sordid in- 
fidelity, than is presented in this Autobiography. 
And the writer does not even dream of being 
ashamed of it. His moral sense has, by the oper- 
ation of his godless creed, become so obtuse that 
what a high-minded and gentlemanly nature, not 
to speak of a solemn and earnest religious spirit, 
would shrink from as degrading, he coolly and 
without a blush describes as belonging to himself, 
and as being one of his principles of action. 



THE CONNECTION BETWEEN INFIDELITY 
AND SENSUALITY 

Richard Baxter makes the following remark 
respecting himself: "I observed, easily, in myself, 
that if at any time Satan did more than at other 
times weaken my belief of Scripture and the life to 
come, my zeal in religious duty abated with it, and 
I grew more indifferent in religion than before." 
This good man found that infidelity is favorable 
to sin, and that in proportion as doubt concern- 
ing God and the Bible rises, religion declines. 
But if this is true of the renewed man, it is still 
more so of the unrenewed ; and it is in this latter 
reference that we would say a word. 

The two truths that are doubted and denied by 
the current infidelity are those very two which 
Baxter mentions : First, the credibility of the 
Scriptures, and second, the reality of another 
world than this in which we are now living. If 
a man is infidel upon these two points, he cannot 
be religious, either logically or practically. For 
it would be absurd for a man to live with refer- 
ence to another world, if he does not believe that 
7 



93 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

there is one, or to govern his conduct by a book 
which he denies to be trustworthy. Perhaps it 
will be replied that a man may do right because 
it is right, whether there is a God or not, whether 
there be another world or not. This is the sub- 
limated piety suggested by Strauss, who charges 
upon Christian virtue the defect of being self- 
ish, in having so much reference to God and a 
future existence. Man, he says, ought to be 
righteous for righteousness sake, and not because 
another Being has commanded him to be so, or 
because there is another world in which this 
righteousness will make him happy. But such 
virtue as this, in the first place, is self-contra- 
dictory. Righteousness supposes a standard or 
rule. What rule ? Whose rule ? Righteous- 
ness without a God and without a law is in- 
conceivable. And in the second place such 
virtue as this is impracticable. Mankind have 
never dreamed of working righteousness in this 
abstract style. They reason with St. Paul : 
" If in this life, only, we have hope in Christ, 
we are of all men most miserable. What ad- 
vantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Let us 
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." When 
Strauss attempts to be more religious than St. 
Paul, and complains that the apostle's virtue is 
not sufficiently exalted for him, we too turn in- 
fidel, and doubt his sincerity. Macaulay describes 
one of Southey's heroes as marked by contrary 
tempers ; being at one time all clay, at another all 
spirit. In the former mood, he "makes love like 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 99 

cattle." In the latter mood, he " makes love like 
the seraphim, and is too ethereal to be married." 
This Don Roderic in his spiritual mood is much 
like a man who is too religious to be a Christian. 

But Strauss has a motive in thus asking for a 
better virtue than the Christian, or a purer charity 
than that of Howard. He desires to overthrow 
belief in the existence of God and the infallibilitv 
of the Bible, well knowing that men will never 
practice such sublimated ethics as he speaks of, 
but will plunge into worldliness and sensuality in 
order to get all the enjoyment they can before 
they rot into unconsciousness by evolution. 

There are degrees, however, in infidelity ; but its 
influence is the same in kind. It is sensualizing, 
be it moderate or be it extreme. A man may not 
deny all the doctrines of the Bible, or all of the 
attributes of God. He may select some and re- 
ject the remainder. There is much scepticism 
of this sort. But the individual will in every 
instance be guided in his choice by his epi- 
curean inclination rather than by his moral con- 
science. Is it probable that he will select the 
strict doctrines and attributes, and reject the 
others? Will he affirm that God is a consuming 
fire, but deny that God is love ? Will he accept the 
doctrine of endless punishment, but reject that of 
the resurrection of the body ? No ; his unbelief 
will retain those truths that present little opposi- 
tion to a life of pleasure in this world, and will 
cast out those that stand directly in the way of it. 
But in assenting to some of the truths of revela- 



100 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

tion and discarding some, the man in question is 
as really infidel in spirit as Hume or Strauss, upon 
the principle that he who breaks the law in one 
point, is guilty of law-breaking. 

This connection between infidel opinions and 
sinful practice, noticed by the devout Baxter, 
should be kept in view. If men would remem- 
ber that if they do anything to weaken their belief 
in the Word of God and the reality of another 
life, they thereby remove a positive restraint upon 
their appetites and passions and promote sensual- 
ity, either refined or gross, they would be likely to 
think twice before doing it. They would be more 
careful in regard to the books that they read, and 
the teachers they listen to. Instead of toiling and 
studying to weaken their orthodoxy, they would 
toil and study to strengthen it. They would at 
least endeavor to keep their head level, as the 
phrase is. 



THE INFIDEL PHYSICS 

Why is there so much infidelity among the 
naturalists of the present generation ? The an- 
swer to this question may be found in the distinc- 
tion which Whewell makes between inductive and 
deductive habits of mind. In his valuable Bridge- 
water treatise upon " Astronomy and General 
Physics considered with Reference to Natural 
Theology," this learned man of science shows that 
the ascent, by induction, from particular facts and 
phenomena to a general law that shall connect 
and explain them all, is favorable to the idea of a 
First Cause, while the descent by deduction, from 
a general law to the innumerable applications of 
it, is not so favorable, and perhaps is unfavorable. 
When the great discoverers, like Copernicus, Gal- 
ileo, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, and Pascal, are em- 
ployed in reducing to law and order the complex 
facts of the material world, they go up from one 
generalization to another, and from one law to 
another. One cause is resolved into another yet 
more powerful, and this into a third, and so on 
until they reach the limits of their science. In 



102 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

this way, the idea of a higher cause is kept con- 
tinually before them,, and this does not allow them 
to stop until they reach a First Cause. "The 
business of natural philosophy," says Newton, " is 
to argue from phenomena without feigning hy- 
potheses, and to deduce causes from effects, till 
we come to the very first cause, which certainly 
is not a mechanical one." And it is a fact which 
ought not to be forgotten in these days when 
sceptical naturalists are so self-conceited, that all 
the great scientific geniuses who have made epochs 
in natural science by discovering new laws have 
been believers in revelation, and many of them 
devout experimental Christians. 

But when the process is reversed, and the 
naturalist begins to go down instead of up, we do 
not find so much original genius, nor do we find 
so much religious reverence and faith. After 
Kepler had discovered the law which connects the 
periodic times with the diameters of the planetary 
orbits, and Newton had discovered the law of uni- 
versal gravitation according to the inverse square 
of the distance, it was then comparatively easy, 
and required far less of original intellectual power, 
to deduce, or manufacture, inferences and conclu- 
sions from these laws. The natural philosopher 
of this species was not employed in searching for 
the first cause. On the contrary, he assumed that 
he had the first cause in the law, and was busy 
looking for its effects. The great law of gravi- 
tation, he said, is the prime cause of the motions 
of the heavenly bodies, and he spent his life and 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 103 

employed much acute talent in showing mathe- 
matically how the law operates. In this way, the 
laws of nature are thrust in the place of the First 
Cause. Some of the distinguished mathemati- 
cians who have reasoned from the premises fur- 
nished them by Kepler and Newton, and have de- 
veloped by means of algebra and the calculus 
what is contained in them, have been unbelievers 
in greater or less degree. D'Alembert, Laplace, 
and Lagrange, are examples. But there is no 
necessity that the deductive habit of mind should 
be sceptical. There is no need of assuming that 
the force of gravitation is itself the First Cause. 
D'Alembert and Laplace should have said as 
Newton, its discoverer, said : "The business of 
natural philosophy is to deduce causes from ef- 
fects, till we come to the very first cause, which 
certainly is not a mechanical one." But, instead 
of this, when they reached the great and universal 
law which regulates all the movements of the ma- 
terial universe, they followed Newton no further, 
and, as the idolatrous Israelites did to the golden 
calf, bowed down to a mere blind and unconscious, 
though exceedingly mathematical force, and said : 
"This is God ; this is the cause of causes." 

Now, this same tendency to deduction is mak- 
ing infidels of naturalists in this generation. Sci- 
ence, compared with what it was as cultivated by 
Kepler and Newton, is now very contracted in 
its range. The energy, vve might say the rage of 
the naturalist's mind, is now expended upon bi- 
ology and geology. Formerly, the great mathe- 



104 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

matical sciences of astronomy, optics, mechanics, 
and hydrostatics, enlisted the chief attention. 
These are now in the background ; and the names 
which are most in the popular mouth, and the 
fugitive literature, are those of Darwin, Huxley, 
Tyndall, and the like. Philosophers of this species 
cannot be classed with Newton, Pascal, Euler, and 
Laplace, in respect to intellectual power. They 
are not mathematicians, like Herschel and Whe- 
well. Probably, not one of them has read through 
the Principia and the Mecanique Celeste. But 
they have fastened upon some general principles 
discovered by greater and more reverent minds than 
theirs, have postulated these as the ultimate fact, 
and have gone on making deductions and forming 
theories which " untenant creation of its God," 
and deify matter and material forces. 

It has been truly said that the mark of a philo- 
sophical mind is to seek for a first cause, and not 
to be content with a second cause. Tried by this 
test, the devotees of the current infidel physics are 
not philosophers. Is it philosophical to assert 
that the brain is the first cause of thought, merely 
because in our limited experience on earth no 
mind thinks without a brain ? Is it philosophical 
to put the second occasional cause for the first 
efficient cause, and say that the brain is the mind ? 
Because there is phosphorus in the human brain, 
is it philosophical to contend that phosphorus is 
the indispensable condition of all thought in the 
universe, and that where there is no phosphorus 
there is no thought ? Do not God and the angels 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 105 

think ? These questions might be asked indefi- 
nitely, in regard to the many assertions without 
proof in the current materialism. 

What is the remedy ? A wider and deeper 
science, greater familiarity with the dii majorum 
gentium, the scientific geniuses who discovered 
these laws of nature, and who understood their 
relation to the Author of nature far better than 
do the empirics and sciolists who are misusing and 
abusing their discoveries. There will be no new 
and original addition to the stock of scientific 
knowledge, until the inductive habit of mind is 
restored. Men must once more acknowledge and 
worship the First Cause, and no longer deify sec- 
ondary occasional causes, if the science of nature 
is to make progress. There has been a genera- 
tion of such naturalists, or " scientists" as they are 
inelegantly called, but what great discovery has 
been made by them ? There have been applica- 
tions of old laws and forces ; but who of this class 
has had any new intuition into the secrets of nat- 
ure ? Is Darwin's truism, that those animals 
which are best fitted to survive do survive and 
propagate with more or less variation, a wonder- 
ful discovery in physics ? The remainder of his 
theory, that the variation results in the origina- 
tion of a new species, is not a discovery but only 
an hypothesis, because the proof is wanting. 



MODERN APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS 

There are a number of spurious narratives re- 
lating to Jesus Christ which go under the name of 
the Apocryphal Gospels. They contain some of 
the elements of the four canonical Gospels, but 
are made up to a great extent of fanciful stories 
which the imagination of a later time than that of 
the apostles invented. In many instances, a mir- 
acle is described and attributed to our Lord which 
bears some resemblance to one or more of the 
genuine ones. In the so-called Gospel of Thomas, 
for example, it is related that when Jesus was a 
boy of five years, while playing upon the Sabbath- 
day with his mates, he made twelve sparrows out 
of some clay. These playmates informed Joseph, 
his father, that his son "had taken clay and made 
sparrows of it, which it was unlawful to do upon 
the Sabbath-day." Joseph asks Jesus why he has 
done this, and rebukes him for the breach of the 
Sabbath. Jesus releases the sparrows, saying, 
" Fly into the sky ; no one shall ever kill you." 
The sparrows flew up into the heavens praising- 
God Almighty. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY IO? 

Some of these Apocryphal Gospels are less ex- 
travagant than others ; but all of them lack the 
simplicity, naturalness, and what may be called 
the honest good sense of the canonical Gospels. 
The miracles attributed to our Saviour in these 
spurious records are odd, capricious, and often- 
times puerile. They seem to be performed for 
the purpose of causing wonder and admiration, 
like the tricks of a juggler, and not for the pur- 
pose of attesting some divine truth or solemn dec- 
laration of- God. 

These legendary and spurious narratives have 
never been regarded with respect or confidence 
even by the most credulous and superstitious por- 
tions of Christendom. The Papal church, though 
accepting the Old Testament Apocrypha, had too 
much sense and discrimination to place the Apoc- 
ryphal Gospels in the canon. The consequence 
is, that these productions are about as unknown 
and obsolete a portion of literature as can be men- 
tioned. No one has ever built a theory upon 
them ; and no one has gone to them to derive 
either the doctrine or the person of Jesus Christ. 
They have died from utter contempt, and are as 
dead as a door-nail. 

But there are some modern Apocryphal Gospels 
which have received some attention from a certain 
class in modern times, and yet have no more 
claims to respect and belief than the ancient. We 
refer to such fanciful and imaginative productions 
as the Gospel of Strauss and the Gospel of Renan. 
These too have a resemblance to the four Gospels, 



108 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

and could not have been composed without their 
aid. These too, like the old Gospel of Thomas, 
or of Nicodemus, or of James, are the genuine 
Gospels modified to suit the individual notions of 
the new " Gospeller." The earlier forgers thought 
that the narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke and 
John had not miracles enough, and accordingly 
they invented some new ones, and added them. 
The later forgers thought that the four evangelists 
had introduced too many miracles into the ac- 
count, and accordingly they subtract the miracle 
altogether. The old cheats of the Patristic peri- 
od worked over the documents of the four evan- 
gelists, and constructed a picture of Jesus Christ 
which in their opinion was an improvement upon 
the original picture. The new cheats of the nine- 
teenth century, taking the same old documents, 
alter and modify them to suit their own tastes and 
opinions, both philosophical and religious, and 
have presented the modern world with their por- 
traiture of Jesus Christ, which they assure us is 
much superior to any preceding one. A vivid but 
whimsical writer of this generation wrote a book 
which he entitled Sartor Resartus : the Tailor re- 
tailored. These Gospels of the ancient Supersti- 
tion and the modern Unbelief might be called the 
Evangelium Resartum — the Gospel cut over and 
patched up. What is the difference between in- 
venting such a story as that of making birds out 
of clay, which is found in the old legend of 
Thomas, and inventing such a story as that of 
Christ's swooning on the cross, and then reviving 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 109 

in the cool tomb, which is found in the new leg- 
end of Renan ? It is a pure invention in each in- 
stance. The pseudo-Thomas was not an eye-wit- 
ness of the imaginary miracle which he relates, and 
never saw a person that was an eye-witness of it. 
Renan was not an eye-witness of the imaginary 
swoon which he relates, and has neither eye-wit- 
nesses nor documentary evidence to sustain him. 
The swoon of Christ is as pure a figment and fic- 
tion as any of the wonderful stories told in the 
Acta Sanctorum respecting any saint in the Papal 
calendar. Renan and those like him made it up 
out of their own heads. There is nothing histor- 
ical in it, because it is not related by any contem- 
porary witness. It is a modern invention. These 
parallels might be run indefinitely. The so-called 
Gospel of the Infancy relates the following mir- 
acle : Jesus was one day playing with boys of his 
own age upon the roof of a house, when one of 
them slipped and fell to the ground and was killed. 
The rest of the boys ran away in fright. Jesus re- 
mained, and when the neighbors came up they 
accused him of having thrown the dead boy from 
the roof. He denies the accusation, but is not be- 
lieved. Whereupon, standing over the dead body, 
Jesus cries with a loud voice : " Zeno, who threw 
thee down from the roof ? " The dead answered : 
" It was not thou, Lord, but the evil One who 
threw me down." The Christian church from the 
beginning has rejected such a narrative as this, 
because it has no historical support. No one 
knows the name of the writer of the Gospel of the 



110 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Infancy, and every student knows that it was com- 
posed from three to six hundred years after the 
time of Christ's existence on earth. But there is 
full as strong reason why the Christian church 
should reject such a story as that of Renan re- 
specting the hallucination of Mary Magdalen. 
This tale of her seeing an apparition, is the inven- 
tion of a Frenchman who lived in Paris more than 
eighteen hundred years after Christ. It has no 
foundation in any document of any kind. Noth- 
ing like it is to be found even in those earlier 
Apocryphal Gospels to which Rationalism is not 
ashamed sometimes to go, when it finds anything 
to suit its wishes and purposes. 

There is one difference, however, between the 
Gospel of the pseudo-Thomas and the Gospel of 
Strauss or the Gospel of Renan, which is not in 
favor of the latter. The old romancer wrote out 
his story. One can begin and read the Gospel of 
Thomas, or the Gospel of the Infancy, or the 
Gospel of Nicodemus, through, from beginning to 
end, and whatever else he may or may not find, he 
finds a continuous narrative. But the modern ro- 
mancer tantalizes us. He does not compose his 
Gospel, but tells us how it should be composed. 
He is not so interesting as his older brother, be- 
cause he does not narrate the story of Jesus so 
that he who runs may read it. 

Nothing would be more amusing, to say the 
least, than to have had Strauss sit down and re- 
write in Hellenistic Greek the Gospel narrative 
according to his own theories and views — reject- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY III 

ing all that he thought to be unhistorical, and in- 
serting all that he thought to be historical. We 
opine that such an Evangelium Apocryphum 
Straussii, or Evangelium Apocryphum Rena- 
nis, would read as curiously as the Evangelium 
Thomae, and not so edifyingly as the Protevan- 
gelium Jacobi, the best of the Apocryphal Gos- 
pelso 



THE TWO VIEWS OF THE OLD 
TESTAMENT 

There are two views of the nature of the Old 
Testament : The Historical or Traditional ; and 
the Rationalistic or Pseudo-Critical. The one is 
held by the church, the other by parties and indi- 
viduals, sometimes within the church, and some- 
times outside of it. 

i. The Historical or Traditional view is : that 
the books of the Old Testament are the infallible 
word of God communicated to a small circle se- 
lected out of the people of Israel for this purpose. 
Certain holy men of old spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost. These books, consequently, 
do not contain the religious ideas of the unin- 
spired Hebrew race, but the teachings of the Su- 
preme Being. The Old Testament, though He- 
brew in language and modes of expression and 
forms of thought, is not Hebrew literature, but 
Divine revelation ; because literature, properly so 
called, is the natural and spontaneous product of 
a national mind. The Old Testament is not the 
development of the common Hebrew mind as 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 113 

Greek literature is of the Greek mind, and Latin 
literature is of the Roman ; but it is a special 
disclosure from the Divine mind made only to 
a limited number of Hebrews, in order that they 
might teach the Hebrew people as a whole, and 
through them teach the whole world, in matters 
pertaining to religion. The religion of the Old 
Testament, consequently, is not one of the natural 
religions of the globe, but a supernatural religion, 
different from them in kind, intended to enlighten 
their darkness, correct their errors, and do a work 
for sinful man which none of them can do. 

By reason of its Divine origin, the Old Testa- 
ment is an independent book. The narratives in 
Genesis of the creation and fall, of the deluge and 
of Babel, were not constructed out of the similar 
accounts that are found in the archives of ancient 
nations. These latter were not original and older 
materials wrought into the Mosaic narrative, but la- 
ter echoes and corruptions of a revelation made by 
God to Adam concerning events that could have 
had no human spectator, and of a testimony concern- 
ing events that had human spectators like Seth, 
Enoch, and Noah. The accounts of the creation, 
fall, and deluge, handed down in the line of Seth 
and the patriarchs, were finally combined by Moses, 
under Divine guidance, into a history of primeval 
man, which has an accuracy and trustworthiness 
such as belong to no heathen legends or myths. 1 

1 " The great cause of most of the confusion in the tradition of 
other nations was the frequent mixing of several families one with 
another. Now that God might, as it were, satisfy the world of the 



114 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Originated in this manner, the Old Testament 
religion, unlike the natural and national religions 
of the world, is unmixed and homogeneous in its 
nature. It is pure monotheism, from first to last ; 
from Genesis to Malachi. From beginning to 
end, also, it contains the promise and the doctrine 
of a Redeemer and of Redemption. There is no 
polytheism nor pantheism, in the religion of Israel 
as enunciated by Moses and the Prophets. The 
Hebrew people themselves, from time to time, 
became more or less idolatrous and sensual, but 
the religion which Jehovah gave them through in- 
spired persons had nothing of this tincture. In 
brief, the Old Testament is a revelation, not an 
evolution ; a revelation from the Divine mind, and 
not an evolution of the Hebrew mind. 

2. The Rationalistic or Pseudo-Critical view is : 
that the books of the Old Testament are the prod- 

Israelites' capacity to preserve the tradition entire, he prohibited 
their mixture by marriages with the people of other nations. So 
that in Moses' time it was a very easy matter to run up their lin- 
eal descent as far as the flood, nay, up to Adam ; for Adam con- 
versed sometimes with Lantech, Noah's father ; for Lamech was 
born A.M. 874. Adam died 930 ; so that fifty-six years, according 
to that computation, were Adam and Lamech contemporary. Can 
we think Noah ignorant of the ancient tradition of the world, when 
his father was so long coaevous with Adam ; and Methusaleh, his 
grandfather, who was born A.M. 687, died not till A.M. 1656, ac- 
cording to our learned primate Usher ; that is, was six hundred 
years contemporary with Noah. Then, his son was probably liv- 
ing in some part of Jacob's time, or Isaac's at least ; and how 
easily might the general tradition of the ancient history be con- 
tinued thence to the time of Moses, when the number of families 
agreeing in this tradition was increased and incorporated by a 
common ligament of religion." Stillingfleet : Origines Sacrae, II., 
ii., 9. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 1 5 

uct of the common Hebrew mind, as this sponta- 
neously developed in a national literature from age 
to age. The religion of Israel, like the religions 
of Babylon and Assyria, of Egypt and India, of 
Greece and Rome, has no uniform and homoge- 
neous character. It begins, it is claimed, like all 
human religions, in polytheism, and passes gradu- 
ally upward into monotheism. The religion of 
Israel was at first idolatrous. Traces of fetishism 
and polytheism are said to be found in the older 
parts of the Pentateuch, which is a heterogeneous 
collection made by several unknown compilers, and 
of which only a few brief fragments date back of 
the time of Moses. The religion of the Hebrews 
at the time of Moses and the Exodus, as shown 
by later fragments incorporated into the Penta- 
teuch, was not monotheism, but polytheism, like 
that of Egypt from which they emigrated, and like 
that of all the surrounding peoples. Gradually 
the Hebrew religion improves, through that devel- 
opment of the religious sentiment by which man, 
generally, grows better and better. In the eighth 
century before Christ it had become a semi-pagan 
idolatry, partly monotheistic, as is seen from the 
writings of the prophets, which differ from the 
Pentateuch in this particular. Jehovah, the na- 
tional god, who had previously been worshipped 
under the form of a bullock in both Judah and 
Israel, began to be conceived of in a more spiritual 
manner. In the seventh century before Christ the 
process was complete in a pure monotheism, which 
ever afterward continued to be the religion of Israel. 



Il6 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

This theory supposes that there was no super- 
natural revelation of religious truth to the Hebrew 
people, but only that ordinary unfolding of man's 
religious nature which is common to every nation. 
The books of the Old Testament are a history of 
this unfolding in the case of the Hebrews, and are 
no more infallible and entitled to be the rule of 
religious faith for all mankind than any other 
books or literatures which contain similar accounts 
of national religions. The Old Testament is thus 
an evolution, not a revelation ; an evolution of the 
Hebrew mind, and not a revelation from the Di- 
vine mind. 

Such are the two views of the Old Testament. 
They are antagonistic in every fibre. In the en- 
tire history of opinions, there are no two theories 
that are more hostile and deadly to each other than 
these. 1 

1 The antagonism appears in the controversy respecting the 
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. The Christian Church con- 
tends that the legislation of the Pentateuch was supernatural; the 
entire whole of it being a direct communication from God to Moses, 
even down to the details of the tabernacle structure (Ex. xxv. 40 ; 
Num. viii. 4 ; Acts vii. 44; Heb. viii. 5). The Rationalists con- 
tend that the legislation was natural and non-miraculous, the slow, 
piece-meal product of the development of the nation. It required 
centuries to originate the so-called " codes." " Several genera- 
tions," says Briggs (Hexateuch, pp. 106, 124), "are necessary to 
account for such a series of modifications of the same law. There 
seems to be no room for them in the times of Moses, or Joshua, 
or Samuel, or David. A priestly code seems to require its histori- 
cal origin in a dominant priesthood. A prophetic code seems to 
originate in a period when prophets were in the prominence. A 
theocratic code suits best a prosperous kingdom, and a period 
when elders and judges were in authority." 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY II? 

The latter of these two views calls itself the 
" critical " theory, but the method by which it is 
attempted to be established is wholly uncritical. 
Philological criticism, properly so called, is founded 
upon the text of an author, as this is settled by 
ma7iuscripts, and explained by the rules of gram- 
mar and logic. The text itself must be deter- 
mined by the agreement of manuscripts and the 
general consensus of editors, and not by individual 
judgment and caprice. And that interpretation 
of the text which results from the studies and 
learning of the great majority of scholars and 
critics of all ages must be regarded as the true 
one, rather than that which is given by a small 
minority of one age. The catholic interpretation 
is the most probable interpretation, in sacred as it 
is in secular philology. 

Such is the true critical method universally 
adopted in profane literature. Should a critic ap- 
pear in Greek philology, claiming the right to re- 
construct the text of the Phaedo to such a degree 
that large portions of it are declared spurious, and 
this too for the purpose of proving that the doc- 
trine of the immortality of the soul is not taught 
in it ; should he assert that large parts of other dia- 
logues were the product of the time of Alexander, 
or of the Antonines, and this too for the purpose of 
showing that Socrates was a materialist and epi- 
curean in philosophy, and agreed with the sophists 
in opinions generally — should such pseudo-criticism 
as this be attempted in Greek philology, it would 
be dismissed with contempt, and declared to be 



Il8 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

utterly uncritical, because the product of individ- 
ual preconceptions, in contradiction to historical 
judgments. 

This pseudo-critical method, rarely found in 
profane literature, has been frequently applied to 
the sacred writings. While the church universal, 
patristic, mediaeval, and protestant, have been unan- 
imous respecting the authenticity and credibility 
of both the Old and New Testaments, individuals 
and schools, from time to time, have denied both. 
They have been of all grades, deistic, pantheistic, 
and atheistic ; sometimes scoffing, and sometimes 
serious in tone ; but always adopting the same 
pseudo-critical method, in setting up an individual 
or a partisan judgment against the catholic. A 
history of rationalism would show this. But this 
is impossible here. Our limits confine us to the 
more recent theories of the so-called "advanced," 
or "new," or "higher" criticism — for it takes all 
of these names. 

The industry, ingenuity, and perseverance of 
German scholars have been more successful than 
those of any others, in attacking the Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testaments in the rationalistic 
method. The endeavor was first made to destroy 
the credibility of the life of Christ and of the doc- 
trines that depend upon it, by assuming the spu- 
riousness of large portions of the four Gospels, 
and their late origin. All existing manuscripts 
and all the early testimonies respecting the Gos- 
pels and Epistles unquestionably support the tra- 
ditional opinion respecting their genuineness. Baur 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 19 

and Strauss had no new and different manuscripts 
to present to scholars, and no new testimony of 
any force from the first centuries. The only 
method left to them was conjectural criticism, and 
a shaping of the text of the Gospels and Epistles 
to their preconceived idea of Christ, and of the 
supernatural generally. Their principal reliance 
was, the assertion of legendary additions to the 
text, or else of post-apostolic authorship, whenever 
the exigency required it. The most arbitrary ca- 
price was introduced into New Testament exe- 
gesis, by this so-called " critical " method. By it, 
nearly the entire New Testament becomes a spu- 
rious book. Guericke sums up the result of the 
Tubingen " criticism" in these words : " Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke are post-apostolic, and more or 
less legendary ; John's gospel arose far down in 
the second century ; the Acts of the Apostles was 
composed long after the death of Peter and Paul, 
for the purpose of cloaking over the dissension 
between these apostles ; the Epistle to the Ro- 
mans is spurious in the last two chapters ; Corin- 
thians and Galatians are genuine ; but Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians are spu- 
rious ; the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Phile- 
mon are spurious ; the Epistles of Peter, John, 
James, and Jude are all spurious ; the Revelation 
of John is genuine — by which is meant, that it is 
a genuine Ebionitish production full of hatred 
toward Paul and the Pauline Christianity." Such 
extravagance as this in the treatment of a collec- 
tion of writings, the text of which has a stronger 



120 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

support in ancient manuscripts than that of Thu- 
cydides or Virgil, reminds one of Jortins' remark 
concerning a critic of this class, that " his craziness 
consisted in rejecting what all the world received ; 
the opposite folly to which is the receiving what 
all the world rejects." 

A defence of the New Testament appeared in 
the same country where the attack was made. 
German learning, industry, and perseverance 
searched and sifted these postulates and assump- 
tions, and showed their uncritical and unscientific 
character. The authenticity and credibility of the 
Gospels now rests upon an argument better worked 
out in certain directions, and more impregnable 
to a certain class of objections, than it was pre- 
viously ; because Neander, Ebrard, Tholuck, Bleek, 
Guericke, Christlieb, and others were led to defend 
the historical or ecclesiastical view against the 
rationalistic schools. 

The Old Testament is now the point of attack in 
Germany and Holland, and this attack has affected 
Great Britain and America to some extent. It is 
easier to attack the Old Testament than the New, 
because it has a far greater antiquity. Building 
upon the view already described, that the religion 
of Israel is natural and not supernatural, a human 
literature and not a divine revelation — a view pre- 
sented with both genius and learning by Ewald— 
the school of Reuss, Graf, Kuenen, and Well- 
hausen attempt to prove their points by the same 
pseudo-critical method, of postulating the spurious- 
ness and late origin of large parts of the Old 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 121 

Testament, and particularly of the Pentateuch. It 
is with this that the church just now is concerned, 
and in regard to which it has a duty to perform, 
viz., the duty of refuting it. 

And here it is important to notice that much de- 
pends upon the manner in which the refutation is 
attempted. No middle view between the histori- 
cal and the rationalistic can long stand, or will 
succeed in the end. Middle theories, generally, 
are failures ; being absorbed ultimately by one or 
the other between which they try to mediate. The 
history of this Old Testament controversy in Ger- 
many is instructive and a warning. In that coun- 
try, the position of some evangelical defenders of 
the New Testament was uncertain and wavering, 
when the Old Testament was in question. Schlei- 
ermacher cannot be regarded as positive in main- 
taining the inspiration of either Testament — 
certainly not of the Old. But that class of sub- 
stantially evangelical theologians who were influ- 
enced by him, though nearer the creeds of the 
Reformation than Schleiermacher on all doctrinal 
points, yet adopted a vacillating view of the Old 
Testament that weakened them whenever they 
were called to defend it against attacks. Had 
this class of theologians taken a more decided at- 
titude, and firmly maintained the traditional view 
of the Old Testament, as they did of the New; 
had they contended for the supernatural origin of 
the Pentateuch, and especially its freedom from 
mythical elements, as consistently and constantly 
as Hengstenberg and Havernick did, the subse- 



122 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 



quent history of opinion in the German church 
would have been different. The authenticity of 
the Old Testament would, to-day, have a recog- 
nition in Germany more like that which the New 
Testament has. The middle theory of partial, in- 
stead of plenary, inspiration, which they adopted ; 
the separation of the doctrines of the Old Testa- 
ment from the historical narratives in which they 
were imbedded, and the assertion that inspiration 
attaches to doctrine but not to history, opened the 
way for a yet looser and more fatal theory. For if 
the historical account of the exodus, and of the 
journeyings of the children of Israel, is only ordin- 
ary ancient history like the early annals of Egypt 
and Assyria ; if legendary matter, in larger or 
smaller amount, is mixed with elements of fact in 
all the Old Testament narratives from Adam to 
Moses, as it is in all early secular history, then 
doubt and uncertainty will inevitably pass over to 
the doctrines and institutions associated with this 
history. What becomes of the divine authority 
of the decalogue, if it was not actually given to 
Moses by the finger of God on the peaks of Sinai ; 
if those thunderings and lightnings, and the sound 
of a trumpet, and the voice of Jehovah, are either 
in whole or in part mythical imagination and col- 
oring, and not veritable history ? It is impossible 
successfully to maintain the credibility of the doc- 
trines of the Bible while denying that of the nar- 
ratives which it contains. Strauss well understood 
this ; and therefore he devoted the energies of as 
acute and ingenious a mind as ever any special 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 23 

pleader possessed, to prove that the narratives in 
the four Gospels were not historical but mythical. 
If he had succeeded in his endeavor to demonstrate 
that the miraculous birth, the miraculous acts, and 
especially the miraculous resurrection of Jesus 
Christ were fictions and not facts, legends and not 
history, he would have succeeded in overthrowing 
the Christian religion. If Christ be not risen, 
human faith in him is vain. 

It follows, then, that in the contest between 
these two theories a half-way method, either of de- 
fence or of attack, is useless in the end. The truth 
may be given away by conceding too much to 
the opponent in the outset ; or taking for granted 
as a fact what is not such. " Why is it," said a 
shrewd man to a company of scientific friends, 
" why is it that a pail of water weighs no more 
with a fish swimming in it, than when the fish is 
removed ? " Various answers were given. After 
obtaining their explanations, the questioner asked 
them if they were certain that the fact was as the 
question implied. The alleged contradictions in 
the four Gospels must first be shown to be really 
there, before an attempt to remove them is made. 
The alleged variety of wholly diverse codes in the 
Pentateuch must be established as a fact, before 
any endeavor is made to harmonize them with 
each other. And there is all the more reason for 
this precaution, because of the utter absence of 
unanimity among the rationalistic critics on this 
point, and their continual change of schemes. It 
is a guerrilla warfare on their part. Gesenius, De 



124 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Wette, Ewald, and Bleek say that Deuteron- 
omy was composed long after the rest of the 
Pentateuch. Von Bohlen, Vater, Vatke, and 
Reuss assert that it was written first, and is the 
source of the ceremonial parts of Exodus, Le- 
viticus, and Numbers. Some put the Elohist 
before the Jehovist ; others reverse the order. 
Ewald finds seven different documents, and five 
different authors, in the Pentateuch ; others see 
two different documents, and two different au- 
thors. 

A most searching criticism, therefore, should be 
applied first of all to points of this kind, and the 
question be raised immediately, whether there is 
any such difficulty as is asserted by the rationalist, 
and whether a harmony of the Pentateuch is im- 
possible upon the traditional view. For if this im- 
possibility be conceded in the outset without any 
inquiry or contention ; if these unproved assertions 
of the rationalist respecting inherent and intrinsic 
contradictions, and spuriousness or late origin of 
the text, are granted, it will be impossible to main- 
tain the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. If 
it be allowed in the start that Deuteronomy, in 
linguistic particulars and style generally, and espe- 
cially in regard to the sacerdotal and ritualistic in- 
stitutions described in it, is so utterly different from 
the other books of the Pentateuch that it could 
not have originated in the time of Moses, then it 
will be necessary to show, if possible, that it may 
have been composed in the time of Josiah, or later 
yet. But this is the point first to be settled, and, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 25 

in settling it the advocate of the traditional view 
has greatly the advantage. For the more the 
Pentateuch is studied, the more impossible it is to 
prove or to believe that it is post-exilic. Saying 
nothing of its close connection with Egypt, and 
almost total disconnection with Babylon, such a 
burdensome religious constitution as that of the 
Pentateuch could not have been imposed in the 
time of Ezra upon a nation that previously had 
known nothing of it. That an agricultural peo- 
ple, after having lived for centuries with no such 
arrangement, should all at once and suddenly 
agree to cease from labor one day in every seven, 
and one whole year in every fifty years ; that all 
of the male population should be willing to go 
up three times annually to Jerusalem for relig- 
ious services ; that they should go through a round 
of numerous and expensive sacrifices ; and lastly, 
should contribute one-tenth of their whole income 
to religion — that a people, not having done this 
previously, should suddenly make such an entire 
revolution in their manners and customs, is un- 
heard of, and inexplicable by anything that appears 
in the condition of the Jewish nation on their re- 
turn from Babylon. That an enslaved people, not 
yet a nation, fleeing out of Egypt under the guid- 
ance of a leader like Moses supported by the im- 
mediate presence of Jehovah in miracles and won- 
ders, should be willing to adopt suddenly, and for 
the first time, such a burdensome system, is prob- 
able enough ; but that a people a thousand years 
old, with no such guide as Moses, and no such 



126 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

supernaturalism as that of the Red Sea and Sinai, 
should be willing, is incredible. 1 

Consider, also, another particular in which the 
advocate of the traditional view has greatly the ad- 
vantage ; viz., in respect to the age and genuine- 
ness of documents. Contemporaneous opinion 
respecting the authorship of writings, other things 
being equal, is more trustworthy than that of any 
other age ; and the older testimony is, the nearer it 
is to contemporaneous. Whether the Pentateuch 
was composed by Moses, could be better decided 
by a learned Jew of the first century with his 
means of information, than by a learned German 
of the nineteenth century with his means ; for the 
same reason that the opinion of a learned Greek 
of the age of Alexander respecting the authen- 
ticity of Aristotle's Organon, would weigh more 
than that of a learned Englishman of this day. 
The nearer any age is to the origin of writings, the 
more likely it is to know the actual facts regard- 
ing the author. 

Upon such a point as authorship, therefore, the 
later ages, speaking generally, must adopt the 
views of the earlier, unless discoveries are made 
which absolutely prove that the traditional view is 

1 The following observation of Coleridge is in point : " One 
striking proof of the genuineness of the Mosaic books is this — 
they contain precise prohibitions, by way of predicting the con- 
sequences of disobedience, of all those things which David and 
Solomon actually did, and gloried in doing : raising cavalry, 
making a treaty with Egypt, laying up treasure, and polygamis- 
ing. Now, would such prohibitions have been fabricated in those 
kings' reigns, or afterward ? Impossible." — Table Talk, May 20, 
1830. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 27 

an error. But such discoveries are very rare. 
And, certainly, with respect to the authorship of 
the Pentateuch, or of the Gospels, no such con- 
clusive discovery has been made by a modern. In 
adopting, therefore, the traditional view of the 
authorship of the Old Testament, the Biblical cri- 
tic is taking the same course that scholars in pro- 
fane literature take. The belief in the genuine- 
ness of the Platonic dialogues rests upon a testi- 
mony that comes down from a distance of two 
thousand years. But any critic who should now 
assert the spuriousness of this collection merely 
because the testimony is very ancient, and only a 
few names of individual witnesses can be men- 
tioned, would be called upon to give decisive rea- 
sons why the traditional opinion should be surren- 
dered in favor of his view. Any critic who should 
be able to overthrow the established historical 
opinion respecting the genuineness of the writings 
commonly ascribed to the principal Greek and 
Roman authors, and to prove that all preceding 
classical learning and reasoning have been mis- 
taken, would be a remarkable one. None such 
has appeared. 



CONJECTURAL CRITICISM 

There are two views of the origin of the Bible, 
i. That it is the production of a limited circle of 
authors mostly contemporaneous with the events, 
whose names are mentioned in the work itself, and 
who were divinely inspired for the purpose of pro- 
ducing a book having infallible accuracy and au- 
thority. 2. That it is the production of late and 
unknown editors, who gathered up oral traditions 
from unknown and often mythical sources, and put 
them in the form in which they now appear. The 
first is the Historical view, or that commonly held in 
ancient, mediaeval, and modern Christendom. The 
second is the Fragmentary theory, and is confined 
to individuals and schools in modern Christendom. 
According to the historical theory, the Pentateuch 
has Moses for its responsible and inspired author. 
According to the fragmentary theory, with the 
exception of a few parts which perhaps may be 
ascribed to Moses, no man knows who wrote the 
Pentateuch, any more than where the sepulchre of 
Moses is. According to the historical theory, the 
four Gospels are the inspired productions of four 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 29 

men, Matthew, Peter-Mark, Paul-Luke, and John, 
who received and obeyed their Lord's commis- 
sion to prepare his biography for the use of the 
church in all time. According to the fragmentary 
theory, the four Gospels are the uninspired prod- 
uct of unauthorized persons, later than the apos- 
tles, who gathered up the traditions concerning 
Christ that were floating about in the church, and 
wrought them into their present shape. Such, 
briefly stated, is the substantial difference between 
the two theories. One ascribes the Bible to known 
and infallible authors ; the other to unknown and 
fallible editors. 

1. The first objection to the fragmentary theory 
of the origin of the Scriptures is that it is late and 
modern. This, to some persons, is a recommen- 
dation. But in estimating theories, if time is to be 
taken into account, one that has all time behind it 
is preferable to one that has only a fraction. To 
be modern and new is a good recommendation for 
the fashion of a hat, but not for an opinion in 
science. The latest intelligence from the stock 
market is more valuable than the latest intelli- 
gence in Hebrew. The superficiality characteris- 
tic of the present decade is due to a rage for "the 
last thing out," and the neglect of ancient and 
standard learning. If a person's reading is con- 
fined to works composed in his own time, he will 
become the victim of a theorist or a coterie of them. 
His knowledge will be narrow, while he supposes 
it to be omniscient. 

The hypothesis that the Scriptures are a collec- 



13O ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

tion and combination by unknown editors is a 
modern conjecture. Though occasionally broached 
in the Ancient church, it obtained no currency. 
It dates from Spinoza and Hobbes, in the seven- 
teenth century, and more particularly in the eigh- 
teenth century from Astruc (1725), who applied it 
to the Pentateuch, and Semler (1750), who applied 
it to the Gospels and the canon generally. The 
newness of the theory is an objection to it. For it 
is highly improbable that all the investigations of 
Biblical philologists for seventeen hundred years, 
which corroborate the traditional theory of the ori- 
gin of the Bible, should suddenly be invalidated 
by the alleged discoveries of a few theorists in 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sudden 
conversions in religion, like that of St. Paul, are 
possible, but they suppose an Almighty Author. 
Such a sudden revolution in Biblical criticism as 
the refutation of the historical theory and the dem- 
onstration of the fragmentary, would be a pheno- 
menon without parallel in literary history. 

2. A second objection to the fragmentary the- 
ory is, that it is wholly conjectural. Coyjecture 
has its place in all investigation, but it is a very 
narrow place. It must be employed cautiously 
and sparingly, and only by the most learned, bal- 
anced and judicial minds. That which now goes 
under the name of "higher criticism" was for- 
merly known as " conjectural criticism," when 
those standard editions of the Greek and Roman 
classics were being prepared by the great scholars 
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 131 

it would now be beyond the power of the nine- 
teenth century to produce, because of its neglect 
of classical literature and overestimate of physical 
science. But when these erudite editors of the 
classics used the conjectural method, it was infre- 
quently and timidly. Whoever ventured to de- 
clare a passage to be spurious, or to suggest a new 
reading that differed from the manuscripts, or new 
interpretations that departed from those of previ- 
ous scholars, must furnish strong and conclusive 
reasons. His ipse dixit would not do. Individual 
opinions when contradictory to historical were 
looked upon with suspicion, even when there was 
extraordinary learning and acumen. Bentley was 
the most learned classical scholar of his century, 
and was better qualified to make use of conjecture 
in editing the Greek and Latin classics than 
any other one of his time ; but Pope, probably 
with some of the extravagance and injustice of 
satire, said of his editions of Milton and Horace : 

" To Milton lending sense, and Horace wit, 
He made them write what poet never writ." 

But this fear of conjectural criticism, and 
caution in its use, is not characteristic of those 
modern schools of Biblical philology which are 
now employing it for the purpose of recasting the 
Scriptures, in order to force them into the service 
of anti - supernaturalism and infidelity. In en- 
deavoring to disprove the Mosaic authorship of 
the Pentateuch, and the Apostolic authorship of 
the Gospels, they rely chiefly upon the inventive- 



132 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ness and ingenuity of their own intellects in con- 
structing schemes that are unsupported either by 
documents or testimony. The utmost rashness 
and recklessness characterize their work. It would 
be startling, and a refutation of the whole proced- 
ure, to see a Hebrew text of the Pentateuch actu- 
ally edited and published in accordance with the 
conjectural criticism of Kuenen and Wellhausen, 
or a Greek text of the Gospels in accordance with 
that of Baur and Strauss. Critics of this class 
make hypothesis the substance and staple of their 
method, employing it excessively and almost ex- 
clusively. The Hebrew text of the Pentateuch, 
without regard to the manuscripts and the history 
of the text, and with no support from them, is 
arbitrarily parcelled out into sections and fractions 
designated by letters of the alphabet, and this 
fragment is assigned to the " Elohist," and that to 
the "Jehovist," this to Moses and that to an 
unknown editor after the exile, and a fifth to the 
time of Josiah, purely upon the individual guess of 
a man living three thousand years after Moses. 
The Greek text of the four Gospels, without re- 
gard to the authority of numerous, and some of 
them very ancient manuscripts, and in contradic- 
tion to the early testimony of scholars like Origen 
and Jerome, and the consensus of Christendom for 
fifteen hundred years, is declared to be spurious in 
all such Gospels, and also in such Epistles, as the 
scheme of the critic requires. 

Such effrontery and dogmatism in claiming that 
the ipse dixit of an individual or a party outweighs 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 33 

the evidence of documents and historical data, and 
the learning of all the Christian centuries, would 
not be endured for a moment within the province 
of secular literature. Nor is such " higher criti- 
cism " as this attempted in this department. No 
one has endeavored to disconnect the Platonic 
dialogues from the name of Plato, and to prove 
that they are the production of later editors work- 
ing over oral discourses of Socrates that were 
floating in fragmentary form among the circles of 
the Academy. No one has pretended to a knowl- 
edge of Greek literature so much superior to that 
of the Cudworths and Porsons, the Hermanns and 
Stallbaums, as to be able to reverse their judgment 
and demonstrate the spuriousness and late origin 
of large portions of the Phsedo, Symposium, and 
Laws. No one has composed a new life of 
Socrates, evincing that the traditional account of 
him is erroneous. The credulity that trusts such 
assurance as this is to be found only among 
students of the Bible. " The children of this 
world are in their generation wiser than the chil- 
dren of light." The only important attempt of 
this kind in classical literature, that of Wolf, 
though made by the most eminent German philol- 
ogist of the eighteenth century, was a failure. He 
did not succeed in persuading the classical circles 
that the Iliad and Odyssey were not the work of 
Homer, but of a school of rhapsodists whose oral 
poems were collected and combined by later 
editors. 

3. A third objection to the fragmentary theory 



134 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

of the origin of the Bible is that it is fatal to its 
inspiration. If, as a conjectural critic asserts, " the 
great body of the Old Testament was written 
by authors whose names are lost in oblivion " 
(Briggs-Inaugural, p. 33), it was written by unin- 
spired men. Because inspiration, from the nature 
of the case, was always bestowed upon a particu- 
lar known person, and is so represented. " God 
spake unto Moses." " The Lord said unto 
Samuel." " The word of God came to Nathan." 
" The word of the Lord came unto David." " The 
vision of Isaiah which he saw concerning Judah." 
"The word of the Lord came expressly unto 
Ezekiel." " God at sundry times spake unto the 
fathers by the prophets," and the names of these 
prophets were well known to those to whom they 
spoke. Inspiration is not an indiscriminate gift 
of God, like air and water, to anybody and every- 
body, in any age and every age. It is an ex- 
traordinary and rare gift to only a few persons, 
chosen out of the common mass for the purpose of 
Divine communications tg mankind. The " holy 
men of God " who " spake as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost " were not anonymous authors, 
like Walter Scott when he was the great Un- 
known. They belonged to the Jewish people, 
and their names are generally mentioned in the 
Bible in connection with the fact of their inspira- 
tion and the time of its occurrence. The moment 
therefore that inspiration is severed from known 
individuals, the moment it is disconnected from 
the college of prophets and apostles, it becomes 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 135 

inspiration "in the air," without locality, history, 
or evidence. The self consistent advocates of the 
fragmentary theory, like Kuenen and Wellhausen, 
perceive that it is incompatible with inspiration, 
and deny inspiration ; but some who are less 
logical, or more under the restraints of an evan- 
gelical connection, try to retain the inspiration of 
the Pentateuch while denying that Moses is its 
author. The Pentateuch, they say, was composed 
long after Moses by some persons no one knows 
who ; but whoever they were they were inspired. 
This is the inspiration of imaginary persons like 
John Doe and Richard Roe, and not of definite 
historical persons like Moses and David, Matthew 
and John, chosen of God by name and known to 
men. 

The notion that there is an inspiration outside 
of the Biblical circle of the prophets and apostles, 
existing anywhere and at all times, and that the 
unknown collectors and redactors of the Scriptures 
partook of it, was invented by the recent latitu- 
dinarian party in the Presbyterian church who 
adopted the critical principles of Rationalism, but 
who from their ecclesiastical connection did not 
venture to draw the logical conclusion of all Ra- 
tionalists and deny inspiration altogether. The 
assertion that an utterly unknown person was an in- 
spired person is absurd on the face of it, and un- 
tenable because it is not only destitute of proof 
but is absolutely incapable of proof. No testi- 
mony is possible in the case. No one has ever 
seen an unknown man work a miracle as evidence 



136 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

of a divine commission; has heard him speak a 
prophecy or deliver a divine message while un- 
der a divine afflatus ; or can attest that he was the 
author of a particular book of Scripture. No 
proof whatever on such important points as these 
can be furnished by eye-witnesses and contempo- 
raries. An unknown man, virtually, has no con- 
temporaries ; for as no one knows when the man 
himself lived, so no one knows when his contem- 
poraries did. The only testimony conceivable in 
the case is that of the conjectural critic, living two 
or three thousand years later, who merely asserts 
that the unknown author of the Pentateuch, or 
Psalms, or Isaiah, was inspired. This, of course, 
is not of the nature of testimony, because the critic 
"is of yesterday and knows nothing" of ancient 
events, and has observed nothing with any of his 
senses, in the case. 

The absurdity of this notion is apparent, when 
it is considered that nothing whatever can be pre- 
dicated of an 'utterly unknown person, any more 
than of a non-existent one. Attributes and char- 
acteristics of every kind are impossible in both 
cases alike. No one would think of asserting that 
an utterly unknown man, any more than a non- 
existent man, is black, or has a large nose, or un- 
derwent a surgical operation. Such particulars as 
these can neither be affirmed nor denied in these 
instances, because nothing at all is known about 
the person in question, and consequently nothing 
can be testified to. But an inspiration that cannot 
be proved is worthless. Mankind demand evi- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 37 

dence when the claim to this unique and extraor- 
dinary gift of God to the human mind is made. 
And in the instance of that limited circle of proph- 
ets and apostles whose names are mentioned in 
Scripture as the authors of most of the books, and 
are copied from Scripture into the catalogue of the 
canonical books given in the Westminster Confes- 
sion (i. 2), and into all the Christian creeds that 
contain articles upon this point, the proof is forth- 
coming. That Moses, Samuel, David and Isaiah 
were inspired, rests upon testimony of two kinds : 
first, that of Jesus Christ, who authoritatively in- 
dorses the inspiration of the traditional authors of 
the Old Testament ; secondly, that of contempora- 
ries and those who were nearest to contemporaries. 
These latter do not authoritatively indorse like the 
Son of God, but only give witness respecting the 
prophetical and apostolical authorship. The evi- 
dence in this last instance relates only to canon- 
icity, and is precisely like that for the authorship 
of the writings of Plato and Cicero, respecting 
which there is no scepticism in the literary world. 
The evidence in the first instance is wholly unlike 
anything in secular literature, and infinitely higher 
and more trustworthy, provided that Jesus Christ 
was not an impostor, but God incarnate. The as- 
sertion of the critic to whom we have referred, 
that it is "not of great importance that we should 
know the names of those authors chosen by God 
to mediate his revelation" (Briggs-Inaugural, p. 
33), overlooks the fact that in revealed religion 
the credibility of a doctrine depends upon its 



138 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

source, as well as upon its nature and contents. 
For example, the doctrine of the resurrection of 
the body, judged by its mere contents, is the same 
in the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Rawlinson's 
Egypt, I. 319) as in 1 Cor. 15:51, 52. Resurrec- 
tion is resurrection. But when Egyptian priests 
assert a resurrection of the body, and St. Paul as- 
serts it, the ground of belief for the doctrine is 
wholly different in the two instances. And the 
difference is due to the difference in the author- 
ship. In case of an ipse dixit like this, it is im- 
portant to know who ipse is. St. Paul is a known 
man, and his inspiration can be proved. The 
Egyptian priests are unknown men, and if they 
were known there is no proof that they were in- 
spired. Hence the questions of authorship, and 
genuineness of authorship, have always been re- 
garded in Christian apologetics as vital ; and the 
endeavor from the first has been to connect every 
one of the books of the Old and New Testaments 
with some known inspired prophet or apostle. 
The sceptical criticism, on the contrary, has from 
the first endeavored to disconnect them. That the 
first endeavor is difficult in regard to a few of the 
books, is no- reason why the whole position of 
Christian apologetics should be surrendered, and 
the authorship of the Bible be ascribed to utterly 
unknown persons, living no one knows where, and 
no one knows when. 

A deadly thrust is given to the doctrine of infal- 
lible inspiration, by the denial that "the Scriptures 
were written by or under the superintendence of 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY I 39 

prophets and apostles." (Briggs-Inaugural, p. 32.) 
This severs them entirely from that particular 
circle of persons who were called of God by 
name, and inspired by him to receive and record 
his supernatural communications. The Westmin- 
ster Confession, as well as the creeds of Christen- 
dom generally, teaches that the Scriptures were 
composed by or under the superintendence of the 
prophets of the Old dispensation, and the apostles 
of the New, and that these persons, and these only, 
were "the holy men of God who spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost." One of the 
principal endeavors of Christian apologetics from 
Eusebius down, has been to present the proof of 
this. And there is a general consensus in Chris- 
tian apologetics, respecting the authorship of the 
canonical books mentioned in the Westminster 
Confession (i. 2). Its contention is, that they 
were composed by the persons to whom from the 
first they have been' ascribed by both Jewish and 
Christian tradition. Respecting the authorship of 
a few of these books, there is a difference of opin- 
ion among Christian apologetes. But the author- 
ship in these instances is still kept within the in- 
spired circle of prophets and apostles, and the en- 
deavor is always made to give the name of the 
prophet or apostle. It is assumed that if it could 
be incontrovertibly proved that a particular book 
was not written by or under the guidance of a 
prophet or apostle, it is not inspired. Rationalis- 
tic criticism dissents from and combats this consen- 
sus of Christian apologetics. The reason for this 



140 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

constant aim and office of all the learning of evan- 
gelical as opposed to rationalistic criticism is : 
first, because the books themselves generally claim 
to be the composition of these particular persons 
to the exclusion of all other extraneous persons 
known or unknown ; and second, because there 
were no other inspired persons but the prophets 
and apostles. If the Bible cannot be proved to 
be written by the prophets and apostles, it cannot 
be proved to be inspired at all ; because it cannot 
be proved that there were ever a?ty hitman beings 
whatever, excepting these prophets and apostles, 
that were "moved by the Holy Ghost!' The ori- 
gin of an inspired writing must therefore be 
brought by competent testimony within this in- 
spired circle or nowhere. And if it is thus brought 
by ancient Jewish testimony in the case of the 
Old Testament, and by ancient Christian testi- 
mony in the case of the New, it cannot be said to 
be the product of an utterly unknown author even 
in the instances when the name of the particular 
prophet or apostle is debated. For this testimony 
connects it with a definite circle of inspired per- 
sons whose nationality, time, and place are known. 
If, for illustration, there is sufficient reason for be- 
lieving, from Patristic testimony, that the epistle 
to the Hebrews was composed under the super- 
vision of St. Paul, the doubt whether the penman 
was Luke, Apollos, or Barnabas, does not make 
it the product of an "unknown inspired man." 
The maintenance of this position in apologetics is 
vital, and has always been so considered. In dis- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 141 

connecting, as the conjectural critic does, the Pen- 
tateuch from Moses as its responsible and inspired 
author, and connecting it with an unknown editor 
or editors a thousand years later than Moses, he 
has destroyed its inspiration, because, as we have 
seen, an unknown man cannot be proved to be one 
of the " holy men of God who spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost." There is no testi- 
mony or tradition, either for him or against him, 
in regard to this point. In algebra, the value of 
the unknown x can be determined, but there is no 
assignable value to an unknown inspired man. 
The denial that the Pentateuch is what our Lord 
frequently called it, "the book of Moses " (Mark 
12:26; Luke 24:27; John 7:19, 22, 23), has the 
same effect upon its inspired authority and cred- 
ibility, which the denial that the four Gospels 
were composed by the four Evangelists has upon 
the inspiration and credibility of the only source 
the world has for the life of its divine Redeemer. 
There were no infallibly inspired persons upon 
earth between a.d. 33 and a.d. 100, excepting the 
company of the Apostles chosen by Christ to be 
the founders of his church, and, if we may so say, 
his literary executors to write his life for the 
church in all time ; and if the four Gospels were 
not composed by them, or under their superintend- 
ence, they are neither inspired nor infallible. No 
persons but these were authorized or qualified to 
prepare the memoirs of his marvellous origin and 
generation, and of his merciful and sorrowful life 
(Luke 24:49; John 14:26; 15:26; Acts 1:8). 



142 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Whoever denies this, and enlarges the circle 
of New Testament inspiration by asserting that 
others than the Apostles were inspired by the 
Holy Ghost, is bound to prove his assertion. As 
the four Evangelists do in the instance of the 
"Twelve Apostles," he must mention the names 
of the persons, the circumstances under which they 
were called to this office, and the supernatural 
signs of their inspiration (Matt. 10:1-5 ; Mark 
3:14-19; Luke 6:13-16). The burden of proof 
is upon the affirmative, not upon the negative. 
The inspiration of a Biblical writing, therefore, 
stands or falls with its authenticity and genuine- 
ness. If its authorship is forged and spurious ; if 
it is falsely ascribed to the prophets and apostles, 
and is not their work ; it was not written by "holy 
men of God who spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost." 



PSEUDO-HIGHER CRITICISM 

Higher criticism is a legitimate branch of hu- 
man science. There is nothing in the mere name 
that should awaken fear or suspicion. It is an in- 
strument which when rightly employed establishes 
truth, not error; and has been so employed in 
both secular and sacred philology from the begin- 
ning. It is only the misemployment of it that is 
to be dreaded. As there is a true and false phi- 
losophy, theology, physics, and aesthetics, so there 
is a true and a false higher criticism. 

Higher criticism is that discipline which endeav- 
ors to determine the text of an author from in- 
ternal considerations ; such as the connexion of 
thought, the agreement or disagreement between 
themselves of the truths and facts presented, the 
harmony of customs and institutions with the en- 
vironment in which they are said to have existed, 
and other like data for forming an opinion respect- 
ing the original writing. Lower criticism, on the 
other hand, endeavors to determine the text of an 
author from external considerations ; principally 
by examining the extant manuscripts and early 



144 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

versions, and by a comparison deducing the most 
probable text. It is plain that there is greater 
liability to the abuse of the higher criticism than of 
the lower, because in the former more depends 
upon individual opinion and conjecture. When 
two scholars look at the Vatican and Sinaitic 
manuscripts for the Greek text of the New Testa- 
ment actually written in them, there is little room 
for a difference of view as to what it is. But when 
two scholars read the Hebrew Deuteronomy in 
order to decide whether there are contradictions in 
it, or such a diversity in language as to imply several 
authors, there is large opportunity for difference 
of opinion. It is for this reason, that the higher 
criticism needs the restraint and guidance of the 
lower. Those conjectural critics who attempt to 
determine the original text wholly by internal con- 
siderations, without taking into view the testimony 
of manuscripts, versions, and the history of the 
text, are almost certain to commit errors. There 
is nothing of an objective nature to check their 
subjective prejudices, or fancies, or wishes. This 
last remark is the key to the wholly different con- 
clusions to which the genuine and the spurious 
higher criticism have respectively arrived. Critics 
like Hengstenberg, Havernick, Delitzsch, Nean- 
der, and Tholuck in Germany ; like Lowth, Lard- 
ner, Graves, Macdonald, and Lightfoot in Great 
Britain ; by the use of the higher criticism combined 
with the lower, have agreed with the learning of 
Christendom for two millenniums in affirming the 
authenticity of the Old and New Testaments ; while 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 145 

critics like Semler, Eichorn, Strauss, and Well- 
hausen on the continent ; like Geddes, Robertson 
Smith, and Driver in Great Britain ; by the use 
of the higher criticism severed from the lower, 
have asserted the spuriousness of large portions of 
the Word of God. 1 Their method consists in as- 
suming without proof the truth of a mere hypoth- 
esis of their own and then working under it. 

In our young days, we listened to a lecture 
upon ancient Babylon by a person who knew 
nothing about criticism high or low, but who un- 
consciously adopted the method now in vogue 
among that class of specialists who claim to have 
the latest intelligence in Biblical Criticism, and to 
have made discoveries in the Bible that have es- 
caped the notice of all the learning of Christendom 
until recently. Our lecturer illustrated his de- 
scription of the walls, towers, and gates of the city, 
by a set of rudely drawn and colored pictures. At 
one point in his discourse, he made a statement 
which drew somewhat upon the credulity of his 
audience, that the brass gates of the city were two 
hundred feet in height, adding, however, that some 
historians judged them to be only fifty feet high. 
" But," said he, "this is an error, for you see it is 
not so in the picture." We have often been re- 
minded of this mode of reasoning, by the method 
of the pseudo-higher critics. They first invent a 
scheme respecting the origin of the Bible, and 

1 " The age and authorship of the books of the Old Testament " 
(says Driver, Introduction, p. xxxi.) " can be determined only on the 
basis of the internal evidence ; no external evidence worthy of credit 
exists." 

10 



146 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

then shape all their studies and publications by it. 
The received text of the Pentateuch, as it exists in 
all the Hebrew manuscripts, is analyzed and la- 
belled in accordance with their preconceived the- 
ory that the Pentateuch is not the production of a 
single known author, but of many unknown au- 
thors. This theory corresponds to the picture of 
our lecturer. Anything that agrees with it is cor- 
rect, anything that disagrees is incorrect. The 
critic begins with assuming that the traditional 
text- is composite. He does not attempt to prove 
that it is the work of a variety of authors by the 
only method that can prove it, and by the method 
invariably adopted by really learned critics in de- 
termining the origin of the text of any classical 
writer — namely, by the comparison of manuscripts, 
versions, and contemporary or early testimony. 1 
Critics like Kuenen, Wellhausen, and Driver do 
none of this scientific work in support of their 
fundamental position ; and for the good reason 
that they cannot. Such a conclusive argument 
as this, would require manuscripts of the Penta- 
teuch differing from the traditional, and actually 
containing such varieties in structure, diction, and 
sentiment as would necessarily infer different au- 

1 A writer in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1892, after a speci- 
fication of some scores of palpable falsifications of the statements 
of the Pentateuch, made by Wellhausen for the purpose of evinc- 
ing discrepancies and interpolations in it, remarks "that 'inter- 
polations' can be established, if at all, only by the evidence of 
manuscripts and versions, and cannot be allowed merely on the 
ground of the critic's authority." This article incontrovertibly 
demonstrates the untrustworthy scholarship of the present leader 
of the Pseudo-Higher Criticism. 






ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 147 

thors. But no such manuscripts have ever been 
heard of. So far as such diplomatic proof is con- 
cerned, there is no more evidence that the Penta- 
teuch was composed by a series of authors covering 
a thousand years or more of time, than there is 
that the writings of Plato and Aristotle were. 
And the reason why this imaginative conjectural 
method has not been employed in classical philol- 
ogy, and the text of Plato and Aristotle has not 
been hacked and hewed by it, is that real learning 
and sound judgment have held undisputed sway in 
this province, while sacred philology for moral and 
theological reasons has been invaded from time to 
time by schemers and sciolists. 

As there is none of this historical objective 
proof of the composite origin of the Pentateuch, 
the critic of this class flees to a subjective method. 
He takes the only text there is and manufactures 
a variety into it. He decides by a volition that 
this passage came from an unknown document 
which he calls J, and that from another which he 
designates by E, and a third from another noted 
by P, and a fourth from still another distinguished 
by D, and affirms all this with an assurance that is 
in inverse proportion to any actual demonstrated 
knowledge in the case. In this way he spins the 
scheme of the Elohist and the Jehovist, the Priest 
and the Deuteronomist, out of his own head, and 
contorts the Hebrew text up to it. Some one has 
taken the trouble to count up the number of these 
cobwebs, and finds that already there are six hun- 
dred and three upon the Old Testament and one 



148 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

hundred and forty-four on the New. In this pro- 
cess the clauses, verses, and paragraphs of the Pen- 
tateuch are almost microscopically divided. There 
is an utter solution of continuity. Parts which 
to both the learned and the common mind seem 
naturally and vitally connected, are torn asunder, 
alive and bleeding. The connection, beauty, and 
symmetry of the composition are wholly destroyed. 
The printed page upon which the results are ex- 
pressed, like that of Driver's Introduction to the 
Old Testament, has more the look of a treatise 
in algebra than of ordinary English composition. 
There is a multitude of little sentences notated 
with small letters and figures similar to the nota- 
tion of squares and cubes in mathematics, making 
the attempt to read the page much like that of 
picking up pins. When the new Hebrew lexicon 
that is to be adjusted to this scheme is published, 
the process of committing words to memory will 
be drier than ever. 

But the claim is made by the advocates of this 
view of the Pentateuch that all the learning of " the 
day" is with them. Even if this were true, it 
would be necessary, in order to establish their 
superiority, to prove that all the learning of " the 
day " is greater than all the learning of all the past 
generations of scholars, and that Biblical study 
has yielded more solid results in the last fifty 
years than in the preceding eighteen hundred 
and fifty. But it is not true that all the learning 
of the last fifty years is on the side of the conject- 
ural criticism, and the composite authorship of 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 149 

the Pentateuch. The test of the prevalence and 
power of a theory, is the amount and kind of 
literature produced by it. How much of the Bib- 
lical commentary, sermons, ethics, apologetics 
and theology of the last fifty years rests upon 
the pseudo-higher criticism as its base ? Only a 
tittle of it. The influence that is now radiating 
through Christendom from these departments, 
is overwhelmingly that of the old historical crit- 
icism. It is true that the new theory just now 
is exerting a little more than the average in- 
fluence of error, but only because, owing to the 
apathy and toleration of the evangelical churches, 
it has worked its way somewhat into their mem- 
bership, and through this prestige has obtained 
a circulation it never could have got by its own 
power of locomotion ; as a barnacle when it has 
attached itself to a man-of-war is able to circum- 
navigate the globe. Take only a single department 
for illustration. Within the last thirty years, two 
commentaries upon the whole Bible have been 
published and widely circulated in America and 
Great Britain : Lange's and the Speaker's. The 
former contains the best results of the conservative 
German criticism, worked over and made still more 
conservative by American and English scholars. 
The latter is the work of the ripest scholarship of 
the English Episcopal Church. What commen- 
tary upon the whole Bible, having extensive circu- 
lation, has been produced by the opposing criti- 
cism, during this day of vaunted improvement and 
new discovery in Biblical exegesis ? A few scat- 



I50 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

tered commentaries upon single books of Script- 
ure have been composed in the interest of the new 
criticism, but they are only one to hundreds of the 
like produced by thorough students of the histor- 
ical class. The erudite commentary of Keil and 
Delitzsch has had the widest circulation in Great 
Britain and America of any unrevised and purely 
German one, and this proceeds generally upon the 
traditional theory of the origin and authorship of 
the Scriptures. The learned and able special trea- 
tises upon the Pentateuch of Hengstenberg and 
Havernick, of Graves and Macdonald, are stand- 
ard and classical ; and no works produced by the 
specialists of the new criticism are comparable to 
them, in respect to that union of learning with 
judgment, which is indispensable to sound inter- 
pretation. For in order to be a thorough and accu- 
rate interpreter of an inspired book like the Bible, 
something in addition to a lexical and grammatical 
knowledge of Hebrew is required. If this were 
all, a Jewish Rabbi, with his vernacular knowledge 
of the Jewish Scriptures, and of the immense mass 
of Rabbinical literature, would be superior to all 
Christian exegetes. It was said of one of the first 
of English jurists, that all his legal learning passed 
into his judgment before he used it. In these 
days of revived study of the Hebrew and its cog- 
nates, it would be well to remember that philolog- 
ical learning must be combined with tact, insight, 
power to trace the connection of thought, a refer- 
ence to the analogy of doctrine, and spiritual sym- 
pathy with spiritual ideas and truths, in order to a 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY I 5 I 

profound and accurate interpretation of the Word 
of God. 

Thirty years ago, one of the most genuine 
scholars and acutest minds that America has pro- 
duced, the late Henry B. Smith, gave his estimate 
of the learning and strength of the rationalistic 
criticism in a review of what he called " The New 
Latitudinarianism of England," contained in the 
" Essays and Reviews," written by members of 
the English church. Though differing in some 
secondary particulars, these essayists aimed at the 
very same revolution in Biblical criticism and 
dogmatic theology which is now aimed at by the 
" higher critics " in Great Britain and America. 
The language of Dr. Smith is as follows : " Most 
of the writers [of these Essays] have apparently 
derived their objections and their learning from 
German sources, and show the danger of begin- 
ning such studies without passing through them. 
The men who are now [1861] leading the theolog- 
ical and philosophical investigations of Germany, 
are men who have passed through profounder dif- 
ficulties and more thorough criticism than these 
Oxford essayists seem to have yet suspected ; they 
have weighed the difficulties with boldness and 
freedom, and have come out, in spite of them, into 
the clear light of revealed truth. But all this 
class of men, the best and brightest lights of Ger- 
many, are not known or studied by the Oxford re- 
viewers. That Delitzsch, Keil, Kurtz, Havernick, 
Berthau, and Hengstenberg have gone over all 
their Old Testament difficulties ; that Olshausen, 



152 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Ebrard, Tholuck, Lange, Stier, and even DeWette, 
Meyer, and Lucke have replied to many of their 
New Testament criticisms, they do not seem to 
have suspected. The essay of Dr. Rowland Will- 
iams is simply a resume of the results of the ideal- 
izing school of modern criticism as to the history 
and doctrines of the inspiration and authority of 
the Scriptures. No proof is attempted. He seems 
to think that the whole matter is decided. Where 
he is not willing to make direct assertions, he 
throws out wanton insinuations. The tone of self- 
conscious superiority affected in this essay is not 
supported by anything contained in it. The Pen- 
tateuch is declared to be a gradual growth ' from a 
Bible before the Bible ; ' it came into its present 
form about one thousand or seven hundred years 
before Christ. That previous documents may have 
been used in its composition might be conceded, 
without denying its Mosaic authorship ; but Dr. 
Williams reasons upon it as if Kurtz, and Hengs- 
tenberg, and Keil had never written on the ques- 
tion, or noticed all the arguments by which its gen- 
uineness has been assailed. He abandons the 
prophecies of Daniel, transforming them into mere 
history or conjecture, without condescending to 
refer to the replies of Auberlen and Havernick. 
In fact he gives up all prophecy excepting ' per- 
haps one passage in Zechariah, one in Isaiah, and 
one in Deuteronomy on the fall of Jerusalem ; 
though even these few cases tend to melt, if they 
are not already melted, in the crucible of free in- 
quiry.' Even the Messianic interpretation of the 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY I 53 

fifty-third of Isaiah is rejected, although for seven- 
teen centuries only two interpreters (excepting 
Jews) and both of these professed unbelievers, 
gave it such a non- Messianic sense. Bunsen 
makes it refer to Jeremiah, or rather to the 'col- 
lective Israel.' This last interpretation, as Hengs- 
tenberg has unanswerably shown, is most violent, 
has no analogy in the Old Testament, and de- 
mands the most unnatural personifications, as when 
it is said : 'He made his grave with the rich in 
his death.' " Smith, " Faith and Philosophy," pp. 
177,178; 186-188. This opinion of a distin- 
guished Presbyterian theologian is worthy of the 
consideration of the present school of Pseudo- 
Higher Critics in the Northern Presbyterian 
Church. 



FLUCTUATIONS IN GERMAN THEOLOGY 

One argument for the late origin and fallibility 
of the Bible, urged in the present trial for heresy 
in the Presbyterian church by the accused and his 
adherents, is the fact that a large number of the 
professors in German universities are now adopt- 
ing and defending this view. This is not an argu- 
ment that has intrinsic weight, because it does not 
appeal to man's reason and judgment, but to his 
proneness to follow a fashion. It is like the shop- 
keeper's reason for buying a particular article : 
because everybody else is doing so. And it comes 
in collision with the divine command : " Thou 
shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." 

The influence of Germany upon theology has 
not been uniform. Sometimes it has been bene- 
ficial, and sometimes exceedingly injurious. Or- 
thodoxy and heterodoxy have oscillated in this 
country more than in any other. Just now, heter- 
odoxy is in- the ascendant in the universities, though 
perhaps not in the churches. It is undoubtedly 
a fact, and a mournful one, to all who believe 
that the traditional creeds of Christendom are a 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 55 

correct statement of the contents of Scripture, and 
that the religious experience founded upon them 
is the only true experience, that a lapse from these 
creeds and this faith is now widespread in the 
country of the Reformation. Such lapses have 
been frequent there, owing partly to the con- 
nection between church and state, and especially 
to the appointment and supervision of theological 
teachers by the secular authorities instead of by 
the living churches themselves. When Tholuck 
took the chair of Oriental Literature at Halle in 
1824, the rationalism of Wegscheider and Gesenius 
had exclusive sway. Within thirty years he saw 
its decline and the restoration of evangelical views. 
But now, if he were alive, he might see again in 
1893 much that is like what he saw in 1824. And 
yet, judging from the past fluctuations of opinion 
characteristic of the German intellect, it may be 
hoped that the present apostasy from the oecu- 
menical creeds will again be followed by a reaction 
and return to the historical Christianity. But in 
the meantime error is making rapid progress in 
Germany, and the fact is proposed by the " pro- 
gressive" party in the evangelical churches of 
Great Britain and America as an example for 
imitation. Whoever now adopts a scheme be- 
cause it is prevalent in the German universities, 
runs the hazard of adopting a false one. 

We have been led to this line of remark by a 
new phase of heterodoxy which is now becoming 
influential in Germany. Errors grow in clusters, 
and lax views concerning the origin and infallibil- 



156 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ity of the Bible are organically connected with lax 
views in Christian theology generally. A Leipsic 
periodical contains an article on " The Present 
Creed Controversy in Germany" which describes 
the new movement. " Not for decades," says the 
writer, " has the Protestant Church passed through 
such an excitement as that under which she has 
been laboring for the past months, and which is 
agitating her yet, from one end of the country to 
the other." It began with the declaration of two 
pastors, Schrempf and Langen, that they would 
no longer use the Apostles' creed in the ser- 
vices of the church, as they could not adopt some 
of its statements. Their views immediately at- 
tracted attention. " Professor Harnack," con- 
tinues the writer, " being asked by his students 
whether they should enter upon a movement look- 
ing to a removal of the Apostles' creed from the 
vow of ordination, replied that this should not be 
done by the students, but added that this vener- 
able creed contained not a few statements at which 
a historically and dogmatically trained Christian 
must take offence, especially the statement : ' Con- 
ceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin 
Mary.' " This repudiation of one of the principal 
articles of the oldest and most widely accepted of 
all the Christian creeds by the most popular pro 
fessor of church history in Germany, and who is 
influencing: English and American students at 
Berlin, probably, more than any other teacher, 
excited much interest, and finally " led to a con- 
vention at Eisenach of representatives of the more 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 57 

liberal section of the Evangelical church, among 
whom were fifteen theological professors from the 
universities of Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Giessen, 
Gottingen, Halle, Heidelberg, Jena, Leipsic, 
Marburg, Tubingen, and ten pastors and high 
church officials from Prussia, Saxony, Wurtem- 
burg, Hesse, and Gotha. This convention made 
a declaration in which the standpoint of Harnack 
is endorsed, and pronounced against the imme- 
morial claim of Christendom that the birth of 
Christ from a virgin is a fundamental article of 
the Christian faith, the basis of evangelical Chris- 
tianity, since this birth is mentioned only in the 
introduction of the two Gospels of Matthew and 
Luke and is not referred to again in the New Tes- 
tament." Such is the account of this movement 
in the Leipsic article. 

Here is a body of German theologians and 
pastors of the highest ecclesiastical position and 
influence, who deny that Jesus Christ was miracu- 
lously conceived by the Holy Ghost and born 
of a virgin, and in contradiction to all dogmatic 
history and dogmatic theology declare that this is 
not one of the essential doctrines of the Christian 
religion because only two of the four Gospels ex- 
pressly and verbally teach it ! The same argument 
which some theologians in the Presbyterian church 
are urging in support of their denial of the infal- 
libility of the Bible as it came from inspired 
prophets and apostles, namely its present rejection 
in the German universities, should lead them also 
to repudiate the doctrine of the incarnation as it 



158 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

is enunciated in the oldest and most generally 
accepted of the ancient creeds — a creed, moreover, 
which many of these theologians desire to substi- 
tute in place of all the subsequent creeds which 
define the truths of Scripture more precisely and 
rigidly. 

The sudden emerging into notice of this heresy 
at this time is instructive, and a warning to all 
evangelical churches how they wink at and tol- 
erate printed and published error. It is sure to 
sprout. Some fifty years ago Schleiermacher 
published in his Glaubenslehre (§ 97) his opinion 
that " Christ had an earthly father, but that by a 
supernatural operation on the embryo it was 
cleansed from original sin." This was the denial 
of his birth from a virgin, yet coupled with the 
affirmation of his sinlessness. Schleiermacher's 
hypothesis has lain perdu in his theological system 
until now, attracting little or no attention. Now 
it comes to the surface, and becomes the nucleus 
of a large party in the German church. For 
whether the Eisenach convention are as orthodox 
as Schleiermacher in holding to the sinlessness of 
Christ is uncertain ; but that they are as hetero- 
dox as he is in denying the virginal birth, is clear. 
A reference to the text of Schleiermacher sfives 
reason for believing that the Eisenach theologians 
went to him both for their opinion and their 
reason for it ; for they assign the same reason, and 
make the same Scripture citations. 1 

1 Harnack has recently published his own account of the history 
of the Apostles' creed, which has been translated and published 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY I 59 

It is time for the Presbyterian church, which 
still has an unrevised Calvinistic creed, and pro- 
fesses to believe that the Scriptures when ac- 
curately expounded will yield this creed, to cease 
taking lessons in theology from German theolo- 
gians while they are in their present fermentation 
and unsettled condition. In ordinary circum- 
stances of good health and freedom from con- 
tagious disease, nations do not quarantine each 
other. But when cholera or typhus prevails 
among a people, it is not regarded as harsh or 
unfriendly in another people that is particularly 
exposed to abridge intercourse. England and 
America, in times past, have received theological 
benefits from the land of Luther which they 
acknowledge gratefully. But an indiscriminate 
adoption of the varieties of progressive and anti- 
traditional theology now rampant there, would 
nullify much of the good that has been received in 
the past. England and America can do more for 
Germany in her present distracted condition, than 
Germany can do for them. Provincialism is one 

in the Nineteenth Century for July , 1893. In this he asserts that 
"one of the best established results of history is, that the clause, 
' Conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary ' 
does not belong to the earliest Gospel preaching," and the proof 
which he gives for this assertion is the further assertion that the 
Gospels of Matthew and Luke " do not represent the earliest stage 
of evangelical history." In this affirmation, he is contradicted by 
the fact that the miraculous conception of Christ by the Holy 
Spirit is distinctly taught in such very early creeds as that of 
Irenaeus (Adv. Ha^r. i. 10) ; of Tertullian (De Virginibus Velandis, 
c. 1, De Praescrip. c. 13, Adv. Prax. c. 2) ; and of Origen (Prcem. 
op 7rfpi apxoov, interprete Rufino). See Pearson : Creed, Ap- 
pendix. - 



l6o ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

great defect in German learning and authorship. 
Germans read and quote Germans too exclusively. 
If German scholars had been for the last century 
as enterprising and adventurous as English and 
American scholars have been, and German theo- 
logy had been as much pervaded by the massive 
learning, close reasoning, wise judgment, and 
sound faith of the great lights of English and 
American theology of the last three centuries, as 
English and American theology has been by the 
writings of the German divines of this century, it 
would have been less marked by eccentricity and 
departures from historical Christianity ; broader as 
well as deeper in its structure, because more closely 
connected with the traditional faith which has 
been the spinal column of Christendom from first 
to last ; and less deluded by the phosphoric lights 
of schemers and schemes. Germany has produced 
no works superior in first-hand learning, drawn 
from the original sources and not from encyclo- 
paedias and manuals, to the researches of Hooker, 
Cudworth, Usher, Stillingfleet, Pearson, Bull, and 
Waterland, and no dogmatic treatises equal in 
depth and spirituality to those of Howe, Owen, 
Baxter, Bates, Butler, and Edwards. Yet this 
large and solid body of theology is almost un- 
known to the majority of German rationalists. 

The English and American churches should re- 
member, also, that the reputation of the numerous 
theories in Biblical criticism and dogmatic theo- 
logy that are continually rising and disappearing 
in Germany is exaggerated and deceptive. It is 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY l6l 

local, not oecumenical. The so-called "schools" 
are limited circles connected with a particular uni- 
versity, and composed of professors and " privat- 
docenten " ambitious to originate a new theory. 
Their reading lies mainly within the present cen- 
tury, and their citation also. Their effort is to 
bring their book " up to date," and to examine 
" the last thing out." In this way, the solid and 
accurate learning of the great past, and of other 
countries than their own, becomes neglected, and 
is contemptuously called " antiquated." The re- 
sult of this method of authorship, in a country 
where printing is cheap, is an immense issue of 
inferior works, of which not one in a thousand 
becomes a classic in the department to which it 
' belongs. But the number of these publications 
being " legion," a sort of public opinion is manu- 
factured for the novel and anti-historical hypoth- 
eses broached in them, by counting rather than by 
weighing them, and the arithmetical argument 
takes the place of the argument from intrinsic 
truth and reason. 



HUMAN ALTERATIONS OF THE FOURTH 
COMMANDMENT 

The importance of a true theory in order to 
good practice is illustrated by the controversy now 
going on respecting the observance of the Sab- 
bath. Those who advocate the secularization of 
the Lord's day take the view that the seventh day 
of the week was set apart by God merely that 
man might rest from bodily toil. They defend 
the Sabbath chiefly upon the ground that the 
aching muscle, and the tired brain, are better pre- 
pared for six days' work by a cessation from phys- 
ical and mental strain. This theory is part and 
parcel of that materialism which is undermining 
American society and institutions. It supposes 
that the body is of more consequence than the 
soul, and that the interests of time are superior to 
those of eternity. According to this view, if it 
could be shown that man would not be better off 
physically by six days' toil and one day's rest, the 
Sabbath would have no claim upon his observ- 
ance. 

The theory of the Sabbath presented in the 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 163 

Scriptures is directly opposite to this. According 
to both Moses and Christ, the end for which the 
seventh day is set apart is worship. The purpose 
is to afford toiling man an opportunity to think 
of his Maker, and draw nigh to him by prayer 
and praise. " Six days shalt thou labor and do all 
thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of 
the Lord thy God." The descriptions in the Old 
Testament imply not merely a cessation from man- 
ual labor, but from all mental labor that is secu- 
lar and relates only to earth and time. A divine 
blessing is promised to him, and to him alone, 
who turns away his foot " from doing his pleasure 
on God's holy day, and calls the Sabbath a delight, 
the holy of the Lord, honorable, and honors him, 
not doing his own ways, nor finding his own pleas- 
ure, nor speaking his own words." Is. 58:13. 
When Christ denominated himself the Lord of 
the Sabbath, he meant the Sabbath as thus ap- 
pointed and described in the Old Testament, and 
thereby set the seal of his approbation and au- 
thority upon it. Accordingly, all the physical and 
temporal purposes and benefits of the Sabbath 
must be set second to these religious and spiritual 
purposes and benefits. When they come — as they 
do in the train, and as the inevitable consequences 
of a right observance of the fourth commandment 
— they are not to be regarded as the chief end of 
its institution, or the main reason why it was 
given. An old divine says that merely to abstain 
from labor without engaging in public worship, 
is to keep the Sabbath as the cattle keep it. 



1 64 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

The truth is that there is nothing obligatory in 
the observance of the Sabbath, unless it be a day 
of worship. It is a man's solemn duty to worship 
his Maker, and if he fails to perform it he is guilty, 
and will be sentenced as such in the great day. 
When, therefore, you bid him to keep the Sab- 
bath for this purpose, you have a hold upon his 
conscience, and he cannot combat you except by 
taking infidel ground, and denying all obligation 
of this kind. But when you are silent upon this 
religious point, and tell him to rest on the seventh 
day because his bodily health requires it, or his 
mental relaxation makes it necessary, you are pre- 
senting merely a prudential and worldly motive, 
which has no moral force. He can say to you : " I 
am a better judge in respect to what my own 
worldly interests require than you are. I think 
that they will be best promoted by laboring as 
much as I please, and doing what I like on any 
and every day of the week." 

But it is objected that multitudes will not go to 
the house of God and worship him on the Sab- 
bath, and therefore it is better to say to them : 
" Do the next best thing : go into the reading- 
room and read what you like ; go into the park, 
or out into the country, and breathe the fresh air." 
This has actually been said by professed ministers 
of Christ, and, judging from the apathy of many 
professed followers of Christ, meets approval from 
a portion of the visible church. This is certainly a 
bold and reckless dealing with the law of God. 
Suppose that this method should be adopted with 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 165 

all the commandments, instead of with one of 
them. Suppose that the minister of the gospel 
should say to his auditors : " Many of you find it 
impossible to love God with all your heart ; do the 
next best thing : love your wife and children. 
Many of you find it difficult to love your neighbor 
as yourself ; do the next best thing : love your 
farm and your merchandise." What would be 
thought of that spiritual adviser who should en- 
deavor to persuade a licentious person to take up 
with fornication in lieu of adultery, and then 
should crown his labors for the spiritual good of 
his fellow-creature by assuring him that this will 
pass for obedience to the seventh commandment ? 
The duty of the Church, in the present period 
of attack upon the Lord's day, is plain. It is sim- 
ply and firmly to teach the teaching that God has 
given. The Christian ministry must affirm that 
nothing short of devout and reverential worship of 
God in the sanctuary, is obedience of the fourth 
commandment. This, it is true, will convict the 
great majority of men of sin before the Searcher 
of hearts. But so does the proclamation of every 
other one of the ten commandments. Men do not 
keep the law ; but this is no reason for modifying 
or altering it. The actual and veritable command 
must be presented, whether men put it in practice 
or not. The only hope of bringing about correct 
conduct is in laying down the Divine rule of such 
conduct. If the rule itself be changed, and evil is 
put for good, and bitter for sweet, nothing but the 
most lawless and licentious conduct will result. 



l66 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

The theory recently broached that the reading of 
newspapers and magazines, riding or sauntering in 
the country, and similiar occupations and amuse- 
ments, is what God intended when he said on 
Mount Sinai, " Remember the Sabbath-day to 
keep it holy," will prove, in its effects upon society, 
to be the teaching of a false prophet, and be as 
destructive as a wolf in sheep's clothing. 



LIBERAL BIGOTRY 

Dr. Johnson, during his tour to the Hebrides, 
met with a person who like many in the present 
day was vehemently opposed to creeds and con- 
fessions of faith. His principal objection to them 
was that they are inconsistent with mental free- 
dom. The human mind, he said, is confined by 
them, and they ought not to be imposed upon 
it. To this the hard head and robust common- 
sense of Johnson made answer, that what the ob- 
jector called imposition is only a voluntary declara- 
tion of agreement in certain articles of faith which 
a church has a right to require, just as any other 
society can insist upon certain rules being observed 
by its members. Nobody is compelled to belong 
to the church, as nobody is compelled to enter a 
society. This, however, did not satisfy the per- 
tinacious opponent of creeds ; and he continued 
his objections in the same general strain as before. 
Johnson then silenced him with the remark : 
" Sir, you are a bigot to laxness." 

Bigotry is a blind and unreasonable devotion to 
an opinion. It may be found in the ranks of in- 



l68 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

fidelity as frequently as in those of politics or re- 
ligion. The political and especially the theologi- 
cal bigot has had a full share of attention and 
criticism. The latitudinarian bigot is a species 
that has been somewhat overlooked, and taking 
the text we have quoted from Dr. Johnson, we 
propose to preach a short sermon upon the subject 
of Liberal Bigotry. 

Our first remark is, that the liberal thinker, as 
he styles himself, is a bigot in finding fault with a 
religious denomination to which he does not be- 
long, for making an honest and manly statement 
of what it believes. The zeal with which he at- 
tacks a society with which he is not identified, be- 
cause it holds certain tenets as the condition of 
membership, is certainly both blind and unreason- 
able. By what right does he complain of a body 
of his fellow-men because, in the exercise of their 
own judgment, they have come to the conclusion 
that the creed of Calvin or the creed of Arminius 
is the truth, and that the doctrine of Socinus 
or of Swedenborg is error? What reason is there 
in demanding of a large society that they surren- 
der their convictions respecting such subjects as 
the trinity, the incarnation, the apostasy, and the 
redemption, and take in lieu of them the opinions 
of an individual who styles himself a liberal 
thinker ? There might be some reason in this ob- 
jecting to distinct statements of religious truth, if 
the objector were himself concerned in the origin 
and formation of the society adopting them. If it 
were still an open question, and the disputant 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 169 

were entitled to a voice, then his zeal against 
creeds would not necessarily be bigoted. But the 
churches are already in existence. Neither the 
latitudinarian nor the downright sceptic had any- 
thing to do with their origin or constitution, and 
they have no more part or lot in them than an 
American democrat has in the monarchy of Eng- 
land. It is the height of bigotry, therefore, when 
the unbeliever represents the terms of communion 
which religious denominations have established 
not for him, but for themselves, as being bigoted 
and intolerant. 

Our second remark is, that the bigot to laxness 
is himself an inquisitor, and a foe to freely-formed 
opinion. He is uneasy upon seeing that others 
have fixed and settled views, and attempts to un- 
settle them by attacks upon all definite statements 
of doctrine. Why is he not content with the 
liberty which he himself enjoys of adopting no 
particular sentiments, and of maintaining, like the 
ancient sophists, that there is no absolute truth, 
and that one thing is just as valid as another ? 
He is allowed his own dislike and rejection of a 
creed, why should he disallow another man's liking 
for and adoption of a creed ? His complaint over 
the freely-formed conviction of his fellow-men 
that the evangelical system is the truth of God, is 
in reality a protest against their right of private 
judgment, and a demand that they adopt his opin- 
ions upon this point. But this is bigotry. If he 
would be content with his criticism and attack 
upon a particular creed, no fault would be found 



1^0 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

with him. But when, after the criticism and at- 
tack, he pronounces the advocate of the creed to 
be a bigot because he still remains unconvinced 
by his reasonings and still retains his belief, he 
passes the line of free and fair discussion, and en- 
ters the province of intolerance and bigotry. He 
does not meet with this treatment from the de- 
fender of the faith once delivered to the saints. 
The charge of bigotry is not often made by the 
orthodox against the heterodox, but always by the 
heterodox against the orthodox. Perhaps we are 
the first since Dr. Johnson to direct attention to 
the bigotry of laxness. And we do not charge 
bigotry upon the latitudinarian merely because he 
attacks the evangelical creed, but because he calls 
those bigots who are not converted by his argu- 
ments. 

It is curious to notice how extremes meet. 
The latitudinarian will be found to be narrow, 
when he comes to be examined ; and the dogma- 
tist will be found to be liberal, when his real posi- 
tion is seen. The former is restless and uneasy 
upon discovering that his fellow -men in large 
masses are holding fixed opinions, and are ready 
to live and die by them. He complains and quar- 
rels with them for so doing. The latter is calm 
and self-possessed, being satisfied with his freely- 
formed convictions and his self-consistent creed, 
and while he does his best to convert to his own 
views those whom he regards as being in error, 
yet if he finds himself to be unsuccessful, he enters 
no querulous complaint and indulges in no bitter 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 171 

intolerance, because he commits all judgment to 
God and the final day. 

The gentle and fair-minded Addison, in one of 
the Spectators (No. 185), directs attention to what 
he denominates infidel bigotry. " After having 
treated of these false zealots in religion, I cannot," 
he says, " forbear mentioning a monstrous species 
of men who one would not think had any exist- 
ence in nature, were they not to be met with in 
ordinary conversation. I mean the zealots in athe- 
ism. Infidelity is propagated with as much fierce- 
ness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if 
the safety of mankind depended upon it. There 
is something so ridiculous and perverse in this 
kind of zealots, that one does not know how to 
set them out in their proper colors. They are a 
sort of gamesters who are eternally upon the fret, 
though they play for nothing. They are perpetu- 
ally teasing their friends to come over to them, 
though at the same time they allow that neither of 
them shall get anything by the bargain. In short, 
the zeal of spreading atheism is, if possible, more 
absurd than atheism itself. I would fain ask one 
of these bigoted infidels : Supposing all the great 
points of atheism, such as the casual or eternal for- 
mation of the world, the materiality of a thinking 
substance, the mortality of the soul, the fortuitous 
organization of the body, the motions and gravita- 
tion of matter, and the like particulars, were laid 
together and formed into a kind of creed, accord- 
ing to the opinions of the most celebrated atheists , 
I ask, supposing such a creed as this were formed, 



172 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

and imposed upon any one people in the world, 
whether it would not require an infinitely greater 
measure of faith, than any set of articles which 
they so violently oppose. Let me therefore advise 
this generation of wranglers, for their own and for 
the public good, to act at least so consistently with 
themselves, as not to burn with zeal for irreligion, 
and with bigotry for nonsense." 

The present attack upon the Calvinistic creed 
by the so-called "liberal" and "progressive" par- 
ties in Protestantism, is an example of the zeal 
of bigotry. The particular opponents of Calvin- 
ism of whom we are now speaking are not athe- 
ists. They are believers in a deity and the princi- 
ples of morality, and some of them accept a vague 
form of evangelical doctrine. But the language of 
Johnson and Addison nevertheless applies to them. 
In respect to the five points of Calvinism, and the 
general type of doctrine contained in the West- 
minster standards, they are bigoted partisans. The 
zeal which they exhibit in opposition to this intel- 
lectual and powerful theology, is as unintelligent 
and passionate as anything to be found in any an- 
nals whatever. And what is worse, it is an un- 
scrupulous zeal not seen among the orthodox. 
When did the orthodox ever stoop to the method 
of the " liberal " theologian ? When did Calvin- 
ists ever attempt to sap and destroy " progressive " 
theology, by the plan recommended by some 
"progressive" theologians for sapping and de- 
stroying the Calvinistic faith : the plan of remain- 
ing in a denomination after changing one's belief, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 73 

and trying to subvert the creed of the denomi- 
nation ? What Calvinists ever advised Calvinists 
publicly to subscribe an anti-Calvinistic creed, and 
then teach and defend Calvinism within an anti- 
Calvinistic denomination? What Calvinist ever 
advised Calvinists to hold office and take emo- 
luments on anti-Calvinistic foundations? What 
orthodox body has ever put to its own use en- 
dowments that were given for the spread of 
"progressive " theology ? The history of religious 
endowments shows without an exception, if we 
are not mistaken, that it is the looser creed that 
filches from the stricter, not the stricter from the 
looser. 

Whatever else may be laid to the charge of the 
advocates of orthodoxy, covert movements, con- 
cealed opinions, and double dealing cannot be. 
They have never burrowed under ground ; and 
they have never pretended to be what they are 
not. And they have insisted that all who join them 
shall do so in good faith, and hold a common 
creed. For this they are charged with narrowness 
and bigotry ! The charge falls upon the other 
party. 



"ORTHODOX DISBELIEF" 

A recent number of a religious journal con- 
tained an article upon endless suffering by one 
who calls himself an " Orthodox Disbeliever " 
which is deserving of some remark, because it 
probably expresses the sentiments of a certain 
class which though not large may be increasing. 
The writer describes himself as expecting to enter 
the orthodox ministry, and as having begun a the- 
ological course. He found " to his surprise " that 
he was not orthodox on the subject of endless pun- 
ishment. " With sorrow I turned aside," he says, 
" from the ministry, to the great regret of many 
friends, few of whom knew the reason. I feared I 
could not safely and honestly pass the ordeal of an 
examining council. If my disbelief had begun two 
or three years later, I should probably have been 
in the ministry, and should now be preaching fut- 
ure punishment [not endless punishment] without 
emphasis of details, the more earnestly on account 
of the severe mental conflict. I retain my stand- 
ing in an orthodox church, keeping my views to 
myself." 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 75 

This is a frank confession of a want of frank- 
ness. Had this " Orthodox Disbeliever" openly 
said to his friends, " I cannot become an evangeli- 
cal minister because there is one doctrine held by 
the evangelical churches which I do not hold," he 
would have been honored for his fair dealing. 
Had he said to the orthodox church to which he 
belongs, "I do not believe that any human souls 
will be finally lost," his ingenuousness would have 
deserved and received a candid and Christian treat- 
ment by those directly concerned. But as the 
case now stands, he is not entitled to the credit 
that belongs to simplicity and godly sincerity. 
The latter fault is greater than the former. Per- 
haps he was not morally bound to assign the rea- 
son why he did not enter upon the preparation for 
the ministry. As he did not enter the ministry, 
he tioes not sail under false colors in this respect. 
But surely he is morally bound not to continue 
in his present church connections, while holding a 
tenet which the orthodox church regards as fatal 
error. At the very least, he is obligated to inform 
his fellow-members what his views are, and throw 
the responsibility of action upon them. As it now 
stands, he is assuming the responsibility himself, 
and is pretending to be what he is not. 

This acknowledgment of a secret disbelief of 
one of the fundamental truths of Christianity 
while there is a public profession of belief in it, is 
very suggestive. It is valuable as a warning. The 
moral character of an individual rapidly deterio- 
rates when he allows himself in any intellectual 



176 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

duplicity. If a man becomes a Universalist, and 
joins a Universalist society, though in the judg- 
ment of the orthodox he adopts a deadly error, he 
is yet an honest man. His sincerity is worthy of 
respect by the orthodox, and he can respect him- 
self so far as this trait is concerned. But if a man 
becomes a Universalist and pretends still to be an 
evangelical believer, he must hold down his head 
in shame whenever he thinks of the part he is act- 
ing. Not only does he experience in his moral 
and religious character all the evil influence of the 
doctrinal error which he has adopted, but also all 
the demoralizing effects of insincerity and decep- 
tion. 

The writer of the article alluded to describes the 
mental perplexity and anguish which the doctrine 
of endless suffering has produced in his mind, and 
says that he " stays in the orthodox church because 
he is thoroughly orthodox in every other respect, 
and wishes to throw his influence on the side of 
the evangelical faith as a whole." Here we have 
an illustration of the confusion of mind that nat- 
urally accompanies the want of entire openness 
and sincerity. This writer thinks that he can be 
thoroughly orthodox in respect to the atonement 
of Christ, while asserting that the suffering from 
which it saves is only limited and transient ; that 
he can have an evangelical hatred of sin while 
denying that it is eternally damnable ; that he can 
receive all the teachings of Jesus Christ as infal- 
lible truth, and yet doubt the word of the Lord 
when he says, after a full and solemn delineation 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 177 

of the day of judgment and of his own office of 
judge, that those upon his left hand "shall go 
away into everlasting punishment." We have no 
time or space to present the Scripture proof for 
the doctrine of endless punishment. It is very 
probable that we could not by writing a volume 
convert the "Orthodox Disbeliever." But surely 
it cannot require much argument to prove that 
his present position is a false one. If his disbelief 
in endless punishment is right and proper, if the 
truth is really with him, he ought not to be where 
he is. He is in the wrong parish, and in the 
wrong pew. He ought to be opposing what he 
thinks to be error. He is now giving countenance 
to the doctrine of endless punishment. Belonging 
to an orthodox church and reciting an orthodox 
creed, all the weight of his influence goes to main- 
tain a tenet which he says compelled Mrs. Marvyn, 
in the Minister s Wooing, to say : " There must 
be a mistake somewhere." 



"ORTHODOX DISBELIEF" (AGAIN) 

The writer of the article upon "Orthodox Dis- 
belief," upon which we ventured a criticism, has 
sent us a private note which we can reply to only 
through the press. We assure our unknown cor- 
respondent that we have nothing but the best 
wishes for him, and that nothing moved us to 
discuss the subject which he first brought before 
the public, but a sincere desire to promote the 
cause of evangelical truth. We have no other 
motive in again calling attention to it, under the 
second stimulus of a letter from him. 

Our correspondent in his private note explains 
his position more fully than he did in his pub- 
lished communication. From this latter we in- 
ferred that he held the doctrine of restoration, 
while professing to be an orthodox believer in the 
common doctrine of endless punishment. It ap- 
pears now, that he believes in the annihilation of 
the wicked. We do not see that the question as 
to the uprightness of his position is essentially 
changed by this explanation. Orthodox churches 
find no more support in the Bible for the doctrine 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 79 

of annihilation than for that of restoration. One 
tenet is as thoroughly rejected by them as the 
other. A member of an orthodox church is un- 
derstood to believe in the endless punishment of 
the impenitent. The orthodox interpretation of 
Scripture may be erroneous, as our correspondent 
asserts that it is, but this does not alter the fact 
that all orthodox churches stand before the 
world as committed to this interpretation, and all 
their members are committed with them. We 
submit, in all confidence, that our correspondent 
has not made his ecclesiastical position any less 
equivocal by this explanation. 

Oetr correspondent says that years ago he spoke 
to his pastor of his " not decided, but preponderat- 
ing faith in the eventual extinction of the impeni- 
tent, as being the teaching of the Bible ; " that 
since that time he has " found many Christians in 
sympathy" with himself ; and that " in necessary 
changes of abode, the need of expressing his 
doubts has not crossed his mind." We can under- 
stand how a wise and faithful pastor might think 
it best to allow a doubt respecting a cardinal truth, 
time to determine itself in one way or the other ; 
especially in the instance of a church-member who 
had been religiously trained. But surely this 
ought not to have been seized upon as a sign that 
the pastor was himself inclined to the same doubt, 
and disposed to favor the error, or at least to wink 
at it. Is not our correspondent inferring too much 
from this pastor's forbearance and hopefulness ? 
Neither ought he to make too much of the fact 



ISO ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

which he mentions, that "many Christians" sym- 
pathize with him. The term Christian, like the 
term Protestant, has come to be very wide and 
vague. Voltaire was a Protestant, and in the 
same sense all who are not Pagans and Moham- 
medans are Christians. The real question in this 
case is whether orthodox Christians sympathize 
with the doctrine of annihilation, and reject the 
doctrine of endless punishment. 

The reason for not expressing his doubts re- 
specting endless punishment which our correspond- 
ent finds in his changes of residence, strikes us as 
singular. We should have supposed that upon 
leaving one orthodox church and going to another, 
it would have been all the more natural and 
proper to inform the new parties with whom he 
proposed to unite in the profession of an ortho- 
dox creed, that there was one cardinal truth which 
he could not subscribe to. But if he felt no need 
of expressing his doubts privately, what was the 
need of publishing them in a newspaper, and giv- 
ing them a circulation as wide as that of thistle- 
seeds in a high gale ? When a person takes the 
responsibility of setting up his doubts in type, and 
giving them a currency among all classes of read- 
ers, he ought to be fully persuaded in his own 
mind, and not ashamed of his creed ? Surely our 
correspondent is guilty of a grave inconsistency, 
to give it no harsher name, in combating anony- 
mously in a public journal the doctrine of endless 
punishment as it is commonly received in ortho- 
dox churches, and then formally accepting the 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY l8l 

doctrine by remaining in the communion of an or- 
thodox church. He does one thing under cover, 
and the contrary thing before the public. 

The closing inquiry of our correspondent is this : 
" By what warrant is the doctrine of endless pun- 
ishment made a test of church membership ? Are 
orthodox believers prepared to reject all fellow- 
members who do not receive as undeniable reve- 
lation their interpretation of the Bible teaching on 
this question ? " We answer that each church 
makes its own tests of membership, and from the 
nature of the case must do so. Who shall make 
the test for a church but the church itself ? Would 
our correspondent have the Methodists draw up 
the creed of the Presbyterian Church, or vice 
versa ? So long as there are various religious de- 
nominations there must be various creeds ; and 
each creed must be the work of each denomina- 
tion. And of all the articles which enter into the 
evangelical creeds, the doctrine of endless punish- 
ment is the one regarding which there is the least 
difference of opinion and statement. There are 
several views of the atonement, several views of 
original sin, and several views of election and pre- 
destination, but only one view of endless punish- 
ment. The Evangelical Alliance reduced the 
creed under which they would gather evangelical 
Protestantism, to as few articles as possible ; but 
they retained the doctrine of endless punishment 
as indispensable to the integrity of an evangelical 
faith. And this answers the other inquiry of our 
correspondent. The evangelical churches of Amer- 



I 82 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ica and Europe and Asia, assembled in solemn and 
fraternal council, found the doctrine of endless pun- 
ishment in the Word of God, as they understood 
and interpreted it. And they were " prepared to 
reject " communion with all who deny this doc- 
trine. How could they do otherwise ? They do 
not force their interpretation of the Word of God 
upon any individual or any denomination. Nei- 
ther do they affirm that their interpretation is in- 
fallible. But it is their solemn and religious con- 
viction that their interpretation of the Bible on 
this point is correct. All who agree with them, 
they welcome. And all who disagree with them, 
they leave to their own freedom , of will and of 
conscience. And now we ask, in closing, what 
would be thought of a body of men, or of a single 
man, who while privately rejecting the doctrine of 
endless punishment should publicly profess to be- 
lieve it, and should join the Evangelical Alliance ? 



ENDLESS PUNISHMENT AN ESSENTIAL 
DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIANITY 

The assertion made recently in a religious jour- 
nal, that " the fellowship of the churches may be 
safely extended to persons who do not believe in 
eternal punishment, provided they hold with cor- 
dial faith the essential truths of the evangelical 
system," proceeds upon the supposition that the 
doctrine of endless punishment is not an essential 
truth in the evangelical system. But the fact is, 
that there is no doctrine more necessary in order 
to the integrity of the evangelical system than that 
future punishment is eternal. Vicarious satisfac- 
tion for sin is the keystone of the arch of Chris- 
tianity, and if endless retribution for sin be taken 
out, the whole scheme of redemption by the suf- 
ferings of Christ falls to the ground. Let us see 
if this is not so. 

The Scriptures represent the sufferings and 
death of the Son of God as taking the place of 
the suffering and death due to the sinner for his 
sin, and in this way delivering him from his desert. 
But the sufferings of Christ, it is agreed by all 



184 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Trinitarians, from high Calvinists to low Armin- 
ians, are infinite in their dignity and value. They 
are the agony, not of a creature, but of incar- 
nate God. All who are properly denominated 
" evangelical," though they may disagree upon 
many other points of doctrine, scout the notion 
that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was merely finite, 
and that his blood possesses no higher expiating 
virtue than that of a creature. And in this they 
are supported by the Scriptures. But is it sup- 
posable that such an immense oblation as this 
would have been provided to redeem man from 
sin, if sin does not merit the immense penalty of 
eternal death, and is not to receive it? If sin is 
punishable and to be punished for only one thou- 
sand years, is it probable that one of the persons in 
the Trinity would submit to such an amazing hu- 
miliation as to become a worm of the dust, and 
undergo the awful passion of Calvary, in order to 
deliver his rebellious creature from a transient evil 
which is to be succeeded by billions of millen- 
niums of happiness ? A thousand years is indeed 
a long time, and a thousand years of suffering is 
indeed a great woe ; but it shrinks to nothing in 
comparison with what is involved in the humili- 
ation and agony of God incarnate. The profound 
Anselm puts this question to his pupil : " If the 
God-man were here present before you, and, you 
meanwhile having a full knowledge of his divine 
nature and character, it should be said, ' Unless 
you slay that Person, the whole world and the 
whole created universe will perish,' would you put 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 185 

him to death, in order to preserve the whole 
creation?" The pupil replies: "I would not, 
even if an infinite number of worlds were spread 
out before me." Anselm then puts this question 
to the pupil : " Suppose, again, that it were 
said to you : ' You must either slay this infinite 
Person, or the guilt and misery of all the sins of 
the world will come upon you ? ' " The pupil re- 
plies: "I would say, in answer, that I would 
sooner incur the aggravated guilt and misery of all 
the sins, past and future, of this world, and also of 
all the sin in addition that can possibly be con- 
ceived of, than incur the guilt of that one sin of 
slaying the Lord of glory." Now, if this is a cor- 
rect reply in the case in which it is assumed that 
the punishment of sin is endless, much more 
would it be in case it is assumed that the punish- 
ment is only temporary. A suffering that in time 
would cease, surely would not justify such a strange 
and stupendous sacrifice as that of the only-begot- 
ten and well-beloved Son of God. We affirm 
therefore that the doctrine of Christ's atonement 
stands or falls with that of endless punishment. 
He who denies the latter must logically deny the 
former. He who subtracts anything from the de- 
merit of man's sin, subtracts just so much from the 
merit of atoning blood. And what is true logical- 
ly becomes true practically. Disbelievers in end- 
less punishment are not believers in the atone- 
ment. Examine the mental history of one who 
lapses from an evangelical faith to infidelity, in any 
of its forms, and it will be found that the slide 



I 86 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

downward began first with doubts respecting man's 
responsibility for and the guilt of sin. 

But a second and equally strong proof that the 
doctrine of endless punishment is necessary in or- 
der to the integrity of the evangelical system, is 
found in the fact that there can be no evangelical 
piety without it. Evangelical piety, all will con- 
cede, is characterized by penitence. This differ- 
entiates it from the piety of sentimentalism, of 
rationalism, and of pantheism, for all these have 
their varieties of piety. He who is destitute of 
the publican's feeling when he cried, " God, be 
merciful to me a sinner," does not possess the 
piety of the gospel. He is impenitent. Now, 
we affirm that he who in his heart denies and re- 
jects the doctrine of endless punishment, does not 
and cannot truly repent of sin. We know that 
there are some theologians like M tiller and Dor- 
ner whose general evangelical character will not be 
denied, who hold the error of restoration, namely, 
that a part of mankind are saved in the middle 
state, and these are cited in proof of the position 
that a belief in endless punishment is not essential 
to belief in Christ. But this class of theologians do 
not assert that sin does not merit eternal suffering. 
On the contrary, they affirm that it does in its own 
nature, and that irrespective of the death of Christ 
it will certainly meet an endless penalty. But they 
think that in the future world the atonement of 
Christ will be applied to many of the human fam- 
ily, and that a second probation will save men upon 
the same principles, and by the same method, as 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 87 

the first. This heresy stands upon its own bottom, 
and need not be refuted here. But it is plain that 
such theologians as these cannot be cited in sup- 
port of the tenet that sin does not deserve endless 
punishment, and therefore will not receive it. 

Every man who has truly repented, has con- 
fessed in his heart to God that he is hell-deserving. 
Every one who really puts his trust for acquit- 
tal at the bar of God in the atonement of Jesus 
Christ, implicitly and virtually acknowledges that 
his sin merits the worm that dieth not, and the fire 
that is not quenched. The depth and strength 
of the believer's conviction upon this point vary. 
Some are more poignantly convinced of the turpi- 
tude of sin than others ; but no true believer in 
Christ ever positively denies that he might justly be 
punished for ever and ever. To perceive the truth 
of this assertion, let us suppose the contrary. Sup- 
pose that a person under religious concern should 
say to his pastor : "I know that I am a sinner ; 
I confess that I have often done wrong ; but I do 
not believe that I deserve, for the sins of this short 
life, to be punished everlastingly." Would that 
pastor dare to tell him that his experience of sin 
was "evangelical ? " On the contrary, would he not 
bid him, most earnestly and solemnly, search his 
heart yet more thoroughly, under the light of God's 
Spirit and truth, until he should melt down in a real- 
ly contrite manner, and say, what every true peni- 
tent says : 

" My lips with shame my sins confess, 
Against Thy law, against Thy grace ; 



1 88 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Lord, should Thy judgment grow severe, 
I am condemned, but Thou art clear. 

" Should sudden vengeance seize my breath, 
I must pronounce Thee just in death ; 
And if my soul were sent to hell, 
Thy righteous law approves it well. 

" Yet save a trembling sinner, Lord, 

Whose hope, still hovering round Thy word, 
Would light on some sweet promise there, 
Some sure support against despair." 

This is evangelical penitence, and nothing that 
comes short of it is worthy of the name, or will 
prove to be the thing, when all sinners shall stand 
at the bar of God, and know even as they are 
known. 



HELLPHOBIA 

In a book entitled " Notes on Paris," written 
by Taine to describe the spirit and manners of 
modern Babylon, there is an allusion to some of 
the religious phenomena of American life. The 
author says that at a Methodist camp-meeting " a 
platform is raised, and a half dozen preachers take 
turns in preaching upon predestination and damna- 
tion and other equally agreeable topics. They re- 
lieve each other in describing the agony of the 
sinner, his death, the progress of corruption, the 
fires of hell, and all the details of the broiling." 
That predestination is one of the topics of Meth- 
odist preaching will be news upon this side of the 
Atlantic, but accuracy is hardly to be expected 
from a source which "like the French all clin- 
quant" (Henry VIII., i., i) must be brilliant or it 
is nothing. 

We have quoted this scurrilous passage as a 
specimen of what may be denominated " hellpho- 
bia," in order to analyze a kind of fear which shows 
itself in a certain species of literature, and in a 
certain class of persons. 



190 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

A worldly and wicked man is afraid of the future 
life and of the future retribution, with that kind of 
perturbation which is of the nature of fright. The 
thought of sudden death produces consternation 
in his mind. The apprehension that after all there 
may be in reserve for him a searching examination 
into the deeds which he has done in the body, af- 
fects him very much as the cry of fire at midnight 
does. He is put into a panic. This accounts for 
the irritability with which the doctrine of hell is 
met by literary men of the calibre and character of 
Taine. If there were an absolute disbelief, and an 
utter absence of all anxiety about what happens to 
man at death, this tenet of Christianity would be dis- 
missed with a serene indifference. A Protestant is 
never irritated by the doctrine of the immaculate 
conception of the Virgin, or of the Pope's infallibil- 
ity. He has no kind of belief in them, and the 
statement and defence of them awakens no excited 
feeling of any sort. He cannot be made angry at 
them. And the case would be the same with the 
infidel and the doctrine of endless punishment, if 
there were the same utter unbelief. But the case 
is different. The "looking-for of judgment and 
fiery indignation " is native to man. The sceptic, 
notwithstanding his denial of immortality, some- 
times fears that he may be an immortal being, and 
that there may be future punishment of sin. This 
fear worries him, and he takes every opportunity 
to ridicule and combat what he fears. He whistles 
to keep his courage up. He has hellphobia, and 
it shows itself in an irascible temper and an exas- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 191 

perated phraseology, whenever the frightful sub- 
ject is brought to his mind. 

This same spurious and servile fear of hell is 
seen in some preachers. They take pains to sneer 
at the orthodox view of future punishment, to ridi- 
cule that religious experience which has solemnity 
in it, and to recommend a mirthful piety. From 
their manner of treating the subject, it is plain that 
they fear hell more than they fear sin. Hell, for 
them, is the most dreadful theme that can be brought 
before the human mind, and they too, like Taine, 
are made irritable by it. They, too, have hellphobia. 

A Christian believer is not so. A thorough- 
going orthodox man is not afraid of hell in this 
panic style. His dread of everlasting banishment 
from God, and from all that is pure and good, is 
too well considered and too profound to throw him 
into a mere fright. He is calm and thoughtful in 
the matter. He obeys the command to "fear 
him who when he hath killed hath power to cast 
into hell," in a rational and intelligent way. And 
because he fears hell in this true and solemn man- 
ner, he has made preparation to escape it, in the way 
arranged and pointed out by Almighty God himself. 

The amiable Channing objects to the orthodox 
view of hell, that if one really believed the doctrine 
he' could not have a moment of mental serenity. 
He would run from house to house and from man 
to man, entreating them to flee from the wrath to 
come. He would not be able either to eat, drink, 
or sleep. In short, life for a believer, upon the 
orthodox theory, would be a paroxysm. 



192 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

That the Church is not sufficiently in earnest in 
warning sinners, and endeavoring to save them, 
will be granted by the Church itself in sorrow and 
penitence. But it does not follow that a deep and 
solemn dread of hell, such as the Bible enjoins, is 
incompatible with mental serenity or mental hap- 
piness. Christ came to save from hell, and he who 
is in Christ believes as religiously as ever that there 
is a hell, but rejoices that a ransom has been found 
that "saves from going down into the pit." The 
believer, consequently, can both fear and rejoice 
together. He can rejoice with fear and trembling, 
as he is commanded to do. He can fear and re- 
joice with reference to his own welfare, and he can 
do the same with reference to the welfare of his 
fellow-men towards whom he has been faithful. 

We remark, in conclusion, that the sceptic's hell- 
phobia is far more to be dreaded than the Chris- 
tian's fear of hell. Fright is the worst form of ap- 
prehension. It is useless, besides being torment- 
ing. It does not deliver from peril, or in any way 
help to do so. A frightened child or man is almost 
certain to be lost. He is too much excited to use 
his limbs, and sinks under the waves as helpless as 
a paralytic. In like manner, that man who is in a 
constant panic about hell, and is irritated by the 
mention or preaching of it, will make no efforts to 
be saved from it. He will experience all that is 
wearing and depressing in the doctrine, and will 
feel none of those salutary influences that may be 
made to issue from it. He will die of hellphobia, 
as one is sure to die of hydrophobia. 



THE SINNER AT REST 

A daily journal, in an obituary sketch, de- 
scribes the subject of it in these terms : " His 
nature was diseased with arrogance, passion, and 
cruelty. In youth and early manhood, he was 
boisterous, sensual, revengeful, and profligate. In 
age, he was misanthropical. Of self-poise, con- 
scious rectitude, patience, and meek submission, 
he did not possess a particle." After this deline- 
ation, the writer proceeds in these words: "He 
has long been a wreck. There was nothing before 
him here but an arid waste of suffering, and since 
we understand him thus, we cannot but think, 
with a tender gratitude, that at last he is beyond 
the reach of all trouble, and where neither care, 
sorrow, self-rebuke, unreasoning passion, resent- 
ment against the world, nor physical pain can any 
more torment him." 

We do not know whether this description of 
character is correct. We neither affirm nor deny 
its accuracy, because we are in total ignorance. 
But upon the supposition that the journalist has 
rightly described his subject, we affirm that his 
*3 



194 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

judgment respecting the final issue and result of 
such a life is a very high-handed and bold proced- 
ure. For if the New Testament is true, and the 
words of Jesus Christ respecting the last judgment 
are authoritative, sin and sensuality have a totally 
different end from this. According to the Script- 
ures, the passions and lusts of man do not, like 
the winds and hurricanes of the tropics, rage them- 
selves into rest. If he who claims to be the Re- 
deemer of man knew whereof he affirmed, the 
working of evil desire, occurring as it does in the 
immortal nature of a responsible creature, goes on 
for evermore. By what right and authority, then, 
does a mortal man, whose breath is in his nostrils, 
and who never was in the other world, and knows 
nothing from personal observation of what goes 
on there — by what right does he reverse the state- 
ments of the Founder of the Christian religion 
and assert that there is peace for the wicked ? We 
know that the estimate which the secular press 
puts upon its own judgments and knowledge is ex- 
travagant, but we can hardly believe that, in the 
calmness of reflection, any journalist would seri- 
ously claim a knowledge of the life beyond this, 
and of the condition of departed spirits, that is 
superior to that of Jesus of Nazareth. And yet 
such a judgment as the above quoted implies such 
a claim. We submit that this is a very bold and 
high-handed procedure. 

But it is more than this. It is an immoral and 
vicious procedure. It is adjusting a creed to the 
passions of men. It is constructing a theory of 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 195 

the future life in accordance not with what is 
lovely and of good report, but with what is vile 
and degrading. To tell a man that drunkenness 
and debauchery, like the violent physical exertion 
of a storm-tossed sailor, will end in a deep and 
restful sleep, is to promise happiness to sin. It is 
to tell the transgressor that the wages of sin is 
life. Such teaching contradicts all ethics that are 
respectable, either pagan or Christian. And its 
influence upon the individual and society is utterly 
demoralizing. No social virtue can live if such a 
theory shall prevail. In some aspects, he who 
broaches such a theory is more immoral than the 
drunkard or the debauchee. His vice is mental. 
The drunkard, though enslaved by his own action 
to his own voluntary indulgence, may not, never- 
theless, have changed his creed or vitiated his 
ethics. In the moments of reflection, after his de- 
bauch is over, he may still see and believe with 
trembling, that no drunkard shall inherit the king- 
dom of God. The head is still right, though the 
heart is wrong. But here is a fellow-man, whose 
cooler blood or lymphatic temperament has, per- 
chance, kept him from vice, who stands beside the 
wretched slave of appetite and tells him that his 
sin shall wear itself out, and that all shall be peace- 
ful with him at last. 

The journal from which we have made the quo- 
tation which has led to these remarks complains 
of the fearful depravity of this city, so prolific in 
violence and crime, and also of the still more 
startling proof of this depravity in that this vio- 



ig6 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

lence and crime goes unpunished. We tell this 
journalist that he will be held responsible for this 
crime and this inefficiency in the execution of law, 
just so far as his theory that God will not punish 
sin in hell prevails. The secular newspaper, to a 
great extent, forms public sentiment in the lower 
and middle classes of society. The educated and 
cultivated class derive their opinions from books 
and literature proper. But this class is a minor- 
ity, and in a country governed by universal suf- 
frage must always possess but little actual power 
in the election of judges, and the making and exe- 
cuting of laws. Hence the secular press, if it dis- 
seminates a false theory of crime, or a false view 
of sin and punishment, becomes a potent instru- 
ment of evil. Its opinions, like water through a 
swamp, percolate through the whole substratum 
of community, and make it rotten and sour. 

The existing demoralization in society and poli- 
tics, in this city, is due, mainly, to a disbelief of 
the doctrine of endless punishment. Men cease 
to fear future misery, and then they fear nothing 
else. Reputation, health, and even the happiness 
of friends and family are not sufficient to prevent 
the embezzlement of trust-funds, or the indulgence 
of sensual appetites. Nothing but the apprehen- 
sion of endless pain after death can put a restraint 
upon human passion, and even this is not a certain 
preventive. It is, however, the strongest of mo- 
tives except those of grace and love, and when- 
ever its pressure is taken off, all other merely 
prudential motives prove to be bands of tow be- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 97 

fore the flame. If, therefore, this journalist does, 
in very truth, mourn over the existing dissolute- 
ness of morals, and insecurity of life and property, 
and would do something towards its removal, let 
him not say to that numerous and unreflecting 
class for whom he writes that sin is at rest when 
the mortal coil is shuffled off. On the contrary, 
let him stand in good company, and with Plato 
and Plutarch, of the Pagans, and with Shakespeare 
and Bacon, of the Christians, tell the dissolute 
and the vicious of that " fearful something after 
death." 



ALL RELIGIONS NOT EQUALLY VALUABLE 

Max MtiXLER delivered an instructive and in- 
teresting course of lectures before the Royal Insti- 
tution upon the Science of Religion. The fourth 
and concluding one draws two conclusions, pre- 
pared for by the preceding lectures: i. That 
4 'there is no religion which does not contain some 
grains of truth ;" and, 2. That "in one sense every 
religion was a true religion ; being the only religion 
which was possible at the time ; which was compat- 
ible with the language, the thoughts, and the sen- 
timents of each generation ; which was appropriate 
to the age of the world." The first of these propo- 
sitions no one would dispute. It is a remark of 
St. Augustine himself, which Muller quotes. But 
the second is not true, except in the sense not in- 
tended by the author, that every one of the pan- 
theistic or polytheistic religions was the only one 
"possible at the time " because of the sinfulness of 
its adherents, and the only one " compatible" with 
their evil thoughts and sentiments. In all that this 
learned and serious writer says respecting the 
amount of true morality that is taught in the sys- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 1 99 

terns of Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, and the 
writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, he will 
carry the judgment even of the believer in the pre- 
eminence of Christianity over all other religions. 
There has probably been a tendency among some 
Christian writers to under-estimate and misstate 
natural religion, for the purpose of exalting re- 
vealed. This volume of M tiller will do good ser- 
vice in correcting this error, and in thereby indi- 
rectly supporting the position of St. Paul, that the 
heathen are without excuse, because they know 
enough of the true God and human duty to make 
them guilty for not worshipping the true God, and 
not doing their duty. 

It is just here that the work of Muller is defec- 
tive, and teaches serious error. Because a man 
knows his duty, it does not follow that he performs 
it. A heathen, like a nominal Christian, may have 
a very good theory, and be guilty of very bad prac- 
tice. " I see the good," said a pagan, "and follow 
the bad." The generations of men, under the 
lead of their sages and philosophers, had many 
lessons of wisdom and virtue taught them, but this 
does not prove that they practised them. Did the 
Athenian people obey the teachings of Socrates ? 
Do the millions of China practise the excellent 
precept of Confucius, quoted by Muller, and 
quoted over and over again by very different men 
from him, for the purpose of detracting from the 
originality of Christ's golden rule : " What you do 
not like when done to yourself, do not do that to 
others " ? Turn to the dialogues of Plato, and read 



200 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

those serious and earnest statements of the dying 
Socrates respecting the vanity of time and sense, the 
dignity and importance of truth and virtue, and ask 
Muller, or any other theorist, whether these teach- 
ings exerted the least influence upon the sensual 
and pleasure-loving populace of Athens. All who 
heard them, or heard of them, could not but assent 
to their truthfulness, but none gave heed to them. 
Hence Muller is guilty of a fallacy, when, from 
the correct premise, that all the religions of the 
globe contain some elements of moral truth, he 
draws the conclusion that those who lived under 
these religions obeyed this truth. " I suppose," he 
says, "that most of us, sooner or later in life, have 
felt how the whole world — this wicked world, as we 
call it — is changed by magic, if once we can make 
up our mind to give men credit for good motives, 
never to be suspicious, never to think evil, never 
to think ourselves better than our neighbors. Trust 
a man to be true and good, and even if he is not, 
your trust will tend to make him true and good. 
It is the same with the religions of the world. Let 
us but make up our mind to look in them for what 
is true and good, and we shall hardly know our old 
religion again. If they are the work of the devil, 
as many of us have been brought up to believe, 
then never was there a kingdom so divided against 
itself from the very beginning. There is no religion 
— or, if there is, I do not know it — which does not 
say : * Do good, avoid evil.' There is none which 
does not contain what Rabbi Hillel called the 
quintessence of all religions, the simple warning, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 201 

' Be good, my boy.' " Now, we put our finger 
upon this tenet of the Rabbi, and upon the other 
contained, says our author in all religions, and ask 
him, Are they obeyed? And if not, what then is 
the position before God and justice of every hea- 
then man ? It is one thing to look into the pa- 
gan religions and find some things true and good 
in them, and quite another thing to look into the 
pagan heart and find it full of " fornication, un- 
cleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, ha- 
tred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, 
envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and 
such like." Gal. 5 : 20, 21. Instead of inferring, as 
Muller does, that because the generations of men 
had these religions which contain so much sound 
ethics, saying to men, " Obey the voice of con- 
science ; fear God and love your neighbor," there- 
fore they did obey and all is well with them, and 
the doctrine of their eternal perdition is an excres- 
cence upon Christianity as the worship of Moloch 
was an excrescence upon the ancient religion (we 
quote his own statement) — instead of this infer- 
ence, we put it to our readers whether the exact 
contrary does not follow ? If the heathen world 
has had such an amount of truth in the Vedas 
and Zend-Avesta, and other systems, and has dis- 
obeyed it, then they stand upon the same footing 
with every inhabitant of Christendom who has 
known his duty by the light of a clearer revelation, 
and has not lived in accordance with it. If, there- 
fore, there be condemnation in the day of judgment 
and a punishment in eternity for the latter, is there 



202 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

not also, in less degree it is true, but with as much 
certainty, for the former ? 

The good maxims of Confucius and the Vedas, 
and the yet higher ethics and truer philosophy of 
Plato and Aristotle, do not prove that the millions 
of China, India, Greece, and Rome were prepared 
for a pure and holy heaven, any more than the ex- 
istence of the decalogue in Christendom proves 
that all the millions who have composed Christen- 
dom in the past are now safe and blessed in eternity. 
" Not the mere hearers of the law shall be pro- 
nounced righteous, but the doers of the law." Mai- 
ler, and others like him, are, in fact, terrible preach- 
ers of damnation, when their doctrine is run out for 
them to its logical results. For if the heathen pos- 
sesses this great amount of religious truth and knowl- 
edge, it must be that holy justice will punish him in 
case he has not conformed his character and con- 
duct to it. And how many heathen have done this ? 

The endeavor of the natural religionist to find 
salvation for the heathen in the ethics of their 
religions, is the old and standing attempt of human 
nature to find salvation by the works of the law 
instead of by faith in the Divine mercy revealed 
in Christ. Theorists of this class, of whom there 
are many among the present writers on Compara- 
tive Religions, blink the fact that all the natural 
religions of the globe are law, not gospel. They 
teach morality, but make no provision for the 
pardon and extirpation of immorality. They say 
to man, "Be good," but do not make him so. 
They waken remorse of conscience, but do noth- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 203 

ing to pacify it. They announce a law native to 
the human constitution that condemns the trans- 
gressor, but leave him to its condemnation. To 
find mental peace and eternal life for sinful men in 
such a merely legal and non-pardoning religion as 
this, is to find acquittal for a criminal in the law 
that sentences him, and inward tranquillity in the 
sense of duty which he has violated. This con- 
tradiction is tacitly acknowledged in the general 
denial by this class of writers of the fact of sin, 
and the assertion of the substantial goodness of 
human nature. If, as M tiller says, "we can make 
up our minds to give men credit for good motives," 
and can "trust [believe] a man to be true and good 
even if he is not," it will then be possible to be- 
lieve that "the works of the law," as St. Paul calls 
them, or natural goodness, as the moralist denomi- 
nates them, are a sufficient preparation for eternal 
existence beyond the grave. But if the Biblical 
account of the condition of man be adopted, and 
he is held to be in a state of depravity and 
condemnation because of his violation of the law 
of his own conscience, then the expiation of sin by 
the vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God, and its 
eradication by regeneration by the Holy Spirit, 
afford the only ground of hope. Such is St. 
Paul's account of the Greek and Roman ethical 
systems, which were purer than those of Egypt, 
India, and China. Pie declares that the holiness 
and justice of God are plainly taught in them, but 
denies that his saving mercy is. "The wrath of 
God," he says, "is revealed from heaven against 



204 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

all ungodliness," in the human constitution and 
thereby in all the pagan religions ; but the revela- 
tion of the compassion of God towards sinners 
he confines to Christianity. 1 

If it be objected that St. Paul declares that 
"God hath made of one blood all nations of men, 
for to dwell on all the face of the earth, that they 
should seek the Lord if haply they might feel 
after him and find him," and that missionary 
records mention instances in which an unevan- 
gelized pagan was found with a humble sense of 
sin, and a longing after Him who is "the Desire 
of all nations," the reply is, that this phenomenon 
is not the effect of ethnic religion but of Divine 
grace overflowing into paganism. It results from 
the inward operation of that Holy Spirit "who 
worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth." 
Honor to whom honor is due. The transforming 
power by which a heathen obtains the contrite 
spirit of the prodigal son, cannot be ascribed to 
the moral precepts of Socrates, Confucius, and 
Sakyamuni. The Holy Ghost may and does em- 
ploy "the law written on the heart," and rewritten 
by the heathen sage in his moral system, as a 
means of conviction of sin, and may follow this 
with the regeneration of the soul, but this regen- 
eration is due to revealed religion which is gospel, 

1 Not long ago a young Brahmin of India came to the house of 
a missionary seeking an interview. In the course of conversation 
he said : " Many things which Christianity contains I find in Hin- 
dooism ; but there is one thing which Christianity has and Hin- 
dooism has not." "What is that?" the missionary asked. His 
reply was striking : " A Saviour." 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 205 

not to natural religion which is only law. The 
salvation of man depends upon the new-birth. 
" Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God." It also depends upon the 
actual existence of a pure heart. "Without holi- 
ness no man shall see the Lord." Neither the new 
heart nor the pure heart can be originated by 
the ethical method of mere command. Life and 
not law is needed for this. There is nothing of a 
redemptive nature in the teachings of the Hindoo 
and Grecian sages. The renovation of an unevan- 
gelized man can no more be ascribed to the good 
ethics of an ethnic religion, than that of an evan- 
gelized man can be to the still better ethics of the 
decalogue. In this respect the ten commandments 
are as helpless as the ethnic religions. They can- 
not extirpate sin, any more than can the purest 
maxims of Plato, Aristotle, and Gautama. It is 
not the law, written or unwritten, that forgives 
sin and changes the character. " By the law is 
the knowledge of sin," not its pardon. "The law 
is the strength of sin" for a sinner, not its de- 
struction. "When the commandment came, sin 
revived and I died." "If there had been a law 
given which could have given life, verily right- 
eousness should have been by the law." "The 
law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of 
a better hope did." These Scripture declarations 
concerning the utter impotence of mere law and 
ethics when confronted with the guilt and resist- 
ance of human nature, are verified by the actual 
facts. No guilt is pardoned, and no moral cor- 



206 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ruption is eradicated, by the legal method. The 
populations of India and China, like those of 
Greece and Rome, have been unmoved from 
generation to generation by the wisdom of their 
sages. This ethics has not been put in practice, 
and has brought no peace with God. Will any 
one contend that that moral philosophy which 
Bacon calls "the heathen divinity" has been the 
actuating and transforming principle for heathen- 
dom, as the gospel of Christ has been for Chris- 
tendom ? On the contrary, has not the moral 
truth inlaid in the human conscience, and enun- 
ciated in the systems of the heathen sages, been 
"held down in unrighteousness," as St. Paul 
affirms ; and have not the character and conduct 
of the vast masses of heathenism, from time imme- 
morial, been as contrary to the doctrines of natural 
morality as of revealed religion ? The moral law 
detects and condemns sin, the world over, but this 
is all it can do. Like lunar caustic, it bites into 
the mortified flesh and shows the nature of the 
disease, but there is no healing virtue in it. " It 
is," says Owen ("Saint's Perseverance," Ch. x.), 
"the Spirit of Christ alone that hath sovereign 
power in our souls, of killing and making alive. 
As no man quickeneth his own soul, so no man by 
the power of any threatenings of the law can kill 
his own sin. There was never a single sin truly 
mortified by the law. All that the law can do of 
itself, is but to entangle sin, and thereby irritate 
and provoke it, like a bull in a net, or a beast 
dragged to the slaughter." 



CHRISTIANITY ALONE IS ABLE TO IN- 
CLINE A MAN 

When Henry Martyn was carrying the Gospel 
into Mohammedan countries, he was frequently 
told by the Moollahs that his religion was no bet- 
ter than theirs, because the Koran commands the 
practice of the cardinal virtues as do the Christian 
Scriptures. The Brahmin makes the same objec- 
tion to the missionary of the present day, when he 
asserts that the Vedas enjoin upon their readers 
the worship of one supreme God. The New 
England Brahmin, Emerson, also, in a recent lect- 
ure, sets the Christian religion upon the same level 
with that of Confucius, because the Chinese sage 
taught the "golden rule." Martyn replied to the 
Mohammedan unbeliever, by saying that "Jesus 
Christ came not so much to teach, as to die" His 
chief office was not so much that of a sage as that 
of a priest. Men needed not so much a teacher 
who should instruct them in their duty, as a sacri- 
fice that should atone for their failure to do their 
duty. This reply of Martyn would have little force 
for one who denies that sin needs atonement, and 



208 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

we will not, therefore, press it in reference to this 
class of persons. But there is another aspect of 
Christ and his gospel, which even the unbeliever in 
the doctrine of atonement must feel the force of. 

Suppose it to be true (which, however, we deny) 
that Confucius did teach the "golden rule" as 
clearly and fully as Christ taught it in the Sermon 
on the Mount, would this make Confucius equal 
to Jesus Christ ? It would so far as this particular 
rule is concerned, provided that Christ did no more 
than merely teach the rule. But he did and still 
does a great deal more than this. He imparts a 
disposition to obey the rule. This Confucius never 
did while on earth, and has never done since he 
left it. It is easy enough to point to the north 
star ; any child can do this. But to carry a human 
being to the north star, is beyond the power of 
man. When Christ said to a paralytic, " Arise, 
take up thy bed and walk," he empowered him to 
the act. He imparted a vital force which enabled 
the patient to do what he was commanded to do, 
and without which he could not have done it. But 
when natural religion says to the moral paralytic, 
"Do right," "Be perfect," it bestows no spiritual 
power along with the command, and hence it ac- 
complishes nothing. 

It is surprising to see how this great difference 
between Christianity and all the natural religions 
of the globe is overlooked, in the contest which is 
now croincr on. The "liberal" treatises on Com- 
parative Religion invariably ignore it. The utmost 
that Confucius and Socrates can do, is to give 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 209 

good advice. They cannot incline and enable men 
to obey it. Socrates confesses this with sadness. 
It is the burden of his soul that men will not hear, 
and that he has no power to move their hearts. 
But Christ possesses this marvellous power. He can 
not only say to men, " Whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them," but 
he can actually induce them to do it. Men for 
centuries, of all grades of civilization and culture, 
have come under the power of the gospel, and have 
found in themselves a new heart. This is not 
theory, but fact. That Christianity possesses this 
wonderful power of spiritual transformation is as 
certain as that magnetism affects iron. It is de- 
monstrable by actual experience and observation. 
St. Paul, speaking of the superiority of the gos- 
pel above the moral law, remarks that " if there 
had been a law given which could have given life, 
verily righteousness should have been by the law." 
Now, this imparting of moral life is precisely what 
no religion but that of Christ is competent to. If 
the human heart could have been inclined and per- 
suaded to practise the " golden rule" by the reli- 
gion of Confucius, then verily there would have 
been some color of reason for the assertion that 
Confucius and Christ are equals. But the human 
heart in China remains the same selfish and self- 
seeking thing, and is filled with the same ill-will 
from generation to generation, until the missionary 
preaches the religion of that redeeming God who 
says, " A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit 
will I put within you ; and I will take away the stony 
14 



210 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart 
of flesh." There is not a religion upon the globe, 
excepting the religion of the Old and New Testa- 
ments, that has ever made a saint out of a sinner. 
There are many religions that have advised and 
commanded men to be better and to do better, but 
they have never gone beyond advice and command. 
The same reasoning applies to that other great 
truth which is taught by some of the natural relig- 
ions, namely, the unity of God. No religion but 
the Christian inclines and enables man to love and 
serve this one God. It is not enough merely to 
know and believe that there is one only supreme 
God. The devils, says St. James, believe this. If 
the Vedas should teach monotheism as distinctly 
as does the Old Testament, this would not be suffi- 
cient for man's needs. To supply all his wants, it 
would be necessary that they should so transform 
him in the spirit of his mind, that God should be 
the object of his affection and worship. But 
they have not done this for a single Hindoo, and 
they never will. Yet thousands of Hindoos by 
the gospel have been made new creatures. The 
test, therefore, to be applied to any religion is, not 
what it tells man to do, but what it tells and in- 
clines him to do. There is but one religion in 
which God says to the lost world of mankind, 
"This is the covenant that I will make with the 
house of Israel ; I will put my laws into their mind, 
and write them in their hearts ; for I will be merciful 
to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their in- 
iquities will I remember no more." Heb. 8 : 10, 12. 



THE REASON WHY SIN SHOULD BE 
FORGIVEN 

The patriarch Job, in the depth of his distress, 
cries out, " O that I knew where I might find 
God ! that I might come even to his seat ! I 
would order my cause before him, and fill my 
mouth with arguments." An argument is some 
good and sufficient reason why something should 
be granted or done. Whoever has one, may ex- 
pect to obtain what he asks for. He who can as- 
sign a reason why his request should be allowed 
hopes to succeed, but he who can specify no 
ground for his request has small expectation of 
receiving anything. 

This general principle holds good in all prov- 
inces in which man acts. In case he would get 
anything from his fellow-man, he must have good 
and sufficient reasons. Whoever makes a request 
of his neighbor, or even of his friend, will hear the 
inquiry, Why should I do it ? What reason can 
you give me for doing it? But still more is this 
the case in the higher province of religion. God 
is eminently a Being of reason, and he never acts 



212 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

without grounds and motives of action. When- 
ever, therefore, a man would obtain anything from 
his Maker, he must fill his mouth with arguments. 
He must be able to assign a valid reason why 
God should do the thing he asks for. 

But what arguments has man, and what reasons 
can he give, when he comes before his Maker for 
blessings ? Are there any that spring out of him- 
self ? Has he done anything for God which he 
can mention as a sufficient reason why God should 
now do something for him ? Take the daily 
bread, for example, for which he prays. What 
man upon the planet has so worked for God, and 
done him a service, that the daily bread would be 
a fair and just equivalent ? Take the man's life 
itself, his very existence. What has he accom- 
plished in the way of honor, benefit, or service, of 
any kind toward God, which constitutes a suffi- 
cient reason why God should continue his exist- 
ence for even an hour ? The fact is that if a man 
looks into himself, into his own doings and de- 
servings, he cannot find a scintilla of a reason 
why God should give him either his daily subsist- 
ence or his daily existence. Everything that he 
has, even life, breath, and all things pertaining to 
life, come to him from his Maker. The wealth 
which he may have accumulated is the gift of 
God ; for no man ever became rich in spite of Di- 
vine providence. In looking around, therefore, 
for arguments wherewith to appear before God, 
and upon the strength of which to ask a blessing 
from him, man must go out of and beyond himself. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 213 

But all this is still more true of man as a sinner. 
If he cannot find any sufficient reason in his own 
doings and deservings why God should give him 
his daily bread, still less can he find in them the 
reason why God should bestow upon him the for- 
giveness of sins. Man can no more merit spirit- 
ual blessings than he can merit temporal good. 
He is, if possible, even more dependent upon the 
Divine mercy, than he is upon the Divine omnip- 
otence. 

When, therefore, a guilty creature, like man, 
seeks a reason why he should be forgiven he must 
look away, entirely, from himself. And the argu- 
ment with which he must appear before God, is 
the atonement of the Son of God. This is a" valid 
and sufficient reason why his sin should be blotted 
out. On a dark and gloomy Sunday, we went 
into St. Margaret's church, hard by Westminster 
Abbey, and heard a sermon by a young minister 
of the Church of England. It was a plain and 
powerful discourse upon the atonement addressed 
to some twenty or thirty hearers, mostly old 
women of the godly sort. Among other striking 
and truthful utterances, this was one: "Jesus 
Christ is the hold which the sinner has upon God." 
This sentence is the gospel in a nutshell. By 
pleading the merits of Christ's oblation, the sinful 
creature, utterly powerless in himself, becomes 
almighty with God. For in so doing he brings 
an argument to bear upon the infinite justice and 
the infinite mercy that is omnipotent. Whoever 
lifts up the prayer, " Blot out my transgressions 



214 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

because Christ has died for them on the cross," 
assigns a reason why that prayer should be granted, 
and a reason which God himself knows to be valid 
and good, because He himself has provided it. 

It is here that the fatal error of Socinianism is 
apparent. Socinus, like all who reject the doc- 
trine of vicarious atonement, asks for the remis- 
sion of sins without assigning a reason for the 
procedure. He brings no argument when he 
appears before God. He simply says, " Forgive 
me." The evangelical forgiveness is forgiveness 
with a reason ; it is a rational compassion. The 
Socinian forgiveness is forgiveness without a rea- 
son, and is consequently an irrational mercy. No 
man can be certain that his prayer for the remis- 
sion of sins will be granted, if he approaches God 
in this manner. Guilt is always doubtful, and 
needs something to assure it when it appears be- 
fore the tribunal of justice, which is also the seat 
of mercy. This great assurance is furnished to 
guilty man in the satisfaction of the Son of God. 
If he makes mention of this, he finds that he can 
stand, guilty as he is, before the Holy One. But 
if he ignores this, if he is silent upon this point, 
and especially if he positively denies and rejects 
this divine provision, he comes before God with- 
out any argument at all, and assigns no good 
reason why his prayer should be heard. Suppose 
that after he has uttered the supplication, " For- 
give me my sins," a voice from heaven should 
answer, "Why should they be forgiven?" He 
must be speechless. No answer can be made to 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 215 

that inquiry but the answer, " Because the Son 
of God has died on the cross, the just for the un- 
just." And he whose heart does not prompt him 
to return this answer to this question of questions, 
and especially he whose heart is hostile to this 
answer, and would assign some other reason — 
perhaps his good works, perhaps his sufferings 
and penances — will find himself to be like the 
guest in our Lord's parable, who went to the 
marriage without a wedding garment. " When 
the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a 
man which had not on the wedding garment : and 
he saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou hither 
not having a wedding garment? And he was 
speechless." 



ADVICE TO THE INQUIRING SINNER 

It is not right or safe to depart from the method 
prescribed in the Scriptures for an anxious soul to 
take in order to salvation. Even a slight devia- 
tion, however well intended, works mischief. We 
have heard during seasons of religious awakening, 
the inquirer exhorted to "give his heart to God," 
to ''submit to God," to "resolve to serve Christ." 
This is not the direction which Paul gave to the 
anxious jailer, and neither does it agree with the 
declarations of our Lord respecting the particular 
kind of act which man must perform in order to 
salvation. The Jews once came to the Redeemer 
asking what they must do to work the works of 
God, and his reply was, "This is the work of God, 
that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." The 
first act for the soul in order to salvation is the act 
of faith. " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," is the 
first and only direction, therefore, which should be 
given to an inquiring sinner. When this has been 
done, other things will follow naturally, and be 
done in their order and place ; but until it has 
been done, not a step toward heaven can be taken. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 217 

There are objections to the other direction to 
which we have alluded, which we will specify. 

In the first place, when an inquiring person is 
bidden to give his heart to God, he is commanded 
to present something to God, instead of being in- 
vited to receive something from him. The gos- 
pel method is thus wholly reversed. The Script- 
ure representation of the way of salvation indis- 
putably makes it, from first to last, a blessing 
which comes down from God to man. It does 
not go up from man to God. " Ask and ye shall 
receive." Christ is appointed "to give both faith 
and repentance," as well as the remission of sins. 
Even the very first exercises of sorrow for sin, 
and the very first and faintest exercise of faith, 
are wrought by God. When, therefore, a sinful 
man is bidden, as the first act upon his part, to 
give his heart to God, he is converted from a 
recipient of salvation to an agent and author of 
it. He is urged to do a "work" as the very 
first thing in the process. And it is a work which 
is the most difficult of performance, for a helpless 
and guilt-smitten sinner, that can be conceived of. 
In reality, the whole immense burden is thrown 
upon the poor despairing soul, in the very outset. 
He is told that if he will 2five his heart to God, if 
he will submit his will to Christ, his salvation is 
assured. But this is to put in the fore-front of 
the religious experience something which does not 
belong there. No man can surrender and sweetly 
submit his heart to God, unless he believes that 
the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. 



2l8 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

We are not speaking, of course, of the succession 
in time. The two things may not be distinguish- 
able in time measured by the clock, but in the 
order of nature the soul must first accept and re- 
ceive Christ as its atonement before God, before 
it can become subject and submissive to his will. 
And, therefore, this act of faith must be urged 
upon the inquirer first of any, and before any 
other act is spoken of or enjoined. 

In the second place, this direction conceals 
Christ and his sacrificial work from the guilt- 
smitten soul. While it is engaged in the attempt 
to overcome the love of self, and to give itself 
wholly to God, it cannot see the cross, because, if 
for no other reason, it is too much absorbed. It 
is looking within, instead of looking out and away 
to the Lamb of God. It is summoning its ener- 
gies to overcome its own self-love, and subdue its 
obstinate aversion to holiness, instead of sending 
up an imploring and believing glance to the mer- 
ciful Redeemer who "of God is made unto it 
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification." 
The true answer to the sinner's inquiry, "What 
shall I do?" is, to say to him, "Do nothing ; only 
believe." But if the answer that is given be the 
one which we are criticising ; if he be told to give 
his heart to God ; he is bidden to " do," and this 
will prevent his "believing." No one can do two 
things at once ; and if the anxious inquirer be 
straining every muscle to its utmost tension in 
order to subdue his native depravity, how can he 
relax every muscle and in helpless impotence cast 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 219 

himself upon Christ ? We cannot open and shut 
the hand in one and the same instant, and by one 
and the same volition. Our Lord affirms that his 
yoke is easy. It is so, because the act of faith is 
not a strenuous and vehement act, but a trusting 
and recipient one. It does not try to originate 
holiness by its own volition, but it longs to re- 
ceive the holiness which is freely given it of God. 
The eye and not the hand is the member of the 
body which the Holy Spirit has chosen, by which 
to explain the act by which salvation is secured. 
Look unto me, and be ye saved. Behold the Lamb 
of God. We are not to raise the hand and lift at 
a burden ; we are not to raise the foot and run a 
long and severe race ; but we are simply to open 
the eye and gaze steadily upon the atoning Christ, 
dying a sacrifice for our guilt. It is indeed true 
that after faith has come, after the soul has be- 
held the cross, after the eye has performed its 
function, the hand and the foot and all the mem- 
bers of the body come into requisition. Having 
accepted and received Christ by faith, and having 
thereby been delivered from condemnation, the 
soul is then to run a race, and fight a fight, and 
carry a burden. But the previous faith makes all 
this activity easy and successful. When the eye 
has seen the Lord, it is easy then to lift the hand 
for him. Faith works by love, and the love of 
Christ constraineth us. 

In giving advice, therefore, to inquiring souls, 
we should not direct their attention, first of all, to 
the results of faith in Christ, but to faith itself. 



220 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

The surrender of the heart to God, entire sub- 
mission to his will, a steady and strong deter- 
mination to obey the commandments of Christ, 
renunciation of the world as the chief good — these 
fruits of belief on the Lord Jesus Christ ought to 
be kept in the background while the soul is urged, 
first of all, and as the one thing needful, to cast 
itself humbly and penitently upon the atoning 
work of the Son of God. There is no danger of 
undervaluing the consequences of faith, by thus 
laying stress upon faith in the outset ; for only 
from faith as the root can all these consequences 
spring. He who has believed on the Lord Jesus 
Christ finds that in so doing he has given his 
heart to God as the natural result. But he who 
attempts to give his heart to God, before he has 
believed on the Son of God, is attempting an 
impossibility, and that too by a dead lift. 

There are two invitations given by the Lord 
Jesus Christ, which cover the whole subject of a 
sinner's salvation. One is an invitation to come 
to him, and the other an invitation to come af- 
ter him. Examples of the first are : " Come unto 
me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest." Matt. 11:28. "All that 
the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him 
that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." 
John 6 137. Examples of the second are : " Take 
my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek 
and lowly in heart." Matt. 1 1 : 29. "If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself, and 
take up his cross, and follow me." Matt. 16:24. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 221 

The first of these is an invitation to come to the 
Saviour, by trusting penitently in his atoning 
blood in order to pardon and reconciliation with 
God's holiness. The second is an invitation to 
come after the Saviour, by imitating his character 
and example. And they must be accepted in the 
order in which the Saviour has placed them. A 
reversal of the order is fatal. If the sinner at- 
tempts to come after the Saviour before he has 
come to him, to copy the Redeemer's life and con- 
duct without seeking peace with God by trust in 
the Redeemer's offering for sin, it will be an ut- 
ter failure. A pacified conscience and a sense of 
being forgiven, must go before all true obedience. 
If, again, the sinner separates these two invitations, 
the consequence is equally fatal. If he attempts 
to obey the first without obeying the second, to 
come to Christ without coming after him, he is 
St. James's antinomian and his faith is dead faith 
without works. And if he attempts to obey the 
second invitation without obeying the first, to 
come after Christ without coming to him, he is 
St. Paul's legalist, who has no true sense of sin, 
rejects Christ's expiation, and expects salvation 
by moral character and a moral life. 



VICARIOUS ATONEMENT AND PHILAN- 
THROPY 

"The history of Islamism has ever been a his- 
tory of crime, and to Christian morality alone do 
we owe all the social good that we enjoy." This is 
the judgment of Schweinfurth, the traveller who 
explored that part of Africa where the Mohamme- 
dan slave-dealers carry on their desolating trade. 
The remark is made after reciting a dreadful act 
of cruelty which passed under his own eyes. An 
emaciated and dying slave was dragged out of the 
hut into the broad and fierce light of the tropic 
sun, and there lashed with whips to prove whether 
life was yet extinct. The long white stripes upon 
the withered skin, and the writhing of the limbs, 
showed that soul and body were not yet separated. 
The cruelty continued until there were no signs of 
vitality, and then the slave-boys of the slave-dealer 
played at football with the corpse. 

There are two doctrines taught in Christianity, 
and not taught in Mohammedanism, which if they 
were to become practical and operative in Africa, 
as they are in Europe, would utterly prevent such a 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 223 

scene as this. The first is that the incarnate Crea- 
tor of mankind suffered and died for both the slave 
and the master, that their sins might be forgiven 
them. And the second is that every man ought to 
love his neighbor as himself. No cruelty can be 
practised when man acknowledges that all men are 
alike guilty beings before God, and that God has 
had such compassion upon them all as to give his 
only begotten Son to expiate their guilt. And no 
cruelty, of course, can be wrought by one who is 
animated by the philanthropy of the gospel. No 
man, says St. Paul in another connection, ever yet 
hated his own flesh ; and no man who sees another 
self, as it were, in his fellow - man, can hate or 
harm him. 

The doctrine of God's vicarious atonement is the 
root of all genuine and deep love between man and 
man. They who feel that they have been redeemed 
by a common blood and sacrifice, cannot bite or 
devour one another. This is the one touch oi grace, 
that makes the whole world kin. There is no true 
and abiding source of good will among men, but 
the antecedent good will of God towards men. To 
tell a moral and reputable citizen of a Christian 
nation, who yet rejects the evangelical system, that 
he is capable of the same cruelty towards a fellow- 
man which Schweinfurth witnessed, would not on- 
ly startle but anger him. He would say, "Is thy 
servant a dog, that he should do this thing ? " And 
yet, so long as he does not really and affectionately 
love his fellow-man with a tender and gentle emo- 
tion, so long as grace has not overcome the innate 



224 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

selfishness of the human heart, he is as likely as 
any other man to act like the Mohammedan slave- 
dealer, under similar circumstances and tempta- 
tions, and not restrained by the decencies of civil- 
ized life. And still more, if he lacks that particu- 
lar arid mighty motive of action which St. Paul 
alludes to when he pleads with his converts to "be 
gentle unto all men" in view of "the kindness and 
love of God our Saviour towards man," it is certain 
that in the heart of Africa, and in the situation of 
the Mohammedans, he would do as the Moham- 
medans do. 

The evangelical doctrine of the atonement, while 
it implies the guilt and ruin of man, also implies 
the dignity of man. It is a humbling doctrine, but 
it is also an exalting one. This is too often over- 
looked. If man is a creature for whom the infin- 
ite and adorable God is willing to conceive and 
execute a method of mercy that involves the humil- 
iation and suffering of one of the divine persons 
in the Godhead, surely man must be vastly above 
the brute in the scale of existence, and only a little 
lower than the angels. In the current discussion 
whether man sprung from the sea-slime, and is of 
the same nature with the ape, we have not observed 
that this argument has been urged. It cannot be 
that the Son of God would have left the eternal 
throne to redeem a mere animal. Unless man is 
made in the divine image, and is thereby different 
in kind from all the lower creation, he would not 
be the object of such an interest as is manifested 
in the work of Jesus Christ. If there were reasons 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 225 

which we do not understand why the eternal Son 
of God took not on him the nature of angels and 
did not redeem them, there are certainly reasons 
which we can well comprehend why he took not 
on him the nature of beasts and creeping things. 

According to the view taken of the origin and 
nature of man by the materialist, such an act as 
that described by Schweinfurth, loses much of its 
horror. If that negro slave is of the same species 
with the dog, and there is nothing in his constitu- 
tion that is kindred to the Eternal Spirit, and espe- 
cially if there be no Eternal Spirit, why should 
not our feeling regarding it be only like that 
with which we contemplate the corporeal suffering 
of a brute ? Why do we shudder at it as an enor- 
mity ? The truth is, that the practical theory of 
the Mohammedan slave-trader agrees with the 
speculative theory of the materialist. The latter 
denies that man has an immortal and spiritual nat- 
ure, and the former puts this theory to use. No 
more conclusive proof of the utter falsity of the 
infidel physics could be found, than to apply it un- 
sparingly to human intercourse. The law of the 
strongest would indeed result in the survival of the 
fittest. The poor feeble pagan would be made a 
football by the vigorous Mohammedan, the world 

over. 

IS 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 

In the month of August, 1802, William Words- 
worth stood by the seashore at Calais, and saw 
the evening star slowly sink upon the shores of 
England. As the glittering orb settled nearer 
and nearer to the horizon, all his love and loyalty 
for his native land was kindled, and he gave ex- 
pression to his deep and passionate feeling in that 
noble sonnet — the first of the series dedicated to 
Liberty — which ends with these lines : 

" There ! that dusky spot 
Beneath thee, that is England ; there she lies. 
Blessings be on you both ! one hope, one lot, 
One life, one glory ! I with many a fear 
For my dear country, many heartfelt sighs, 
Among men who do not love her, linger here." 

Ninety years ago these emotions swelled in that 
mind, under that sky, upon that memorable sea- 
coast, and beneath the sound of those waters 
rolling evermore. What is its consciousness at 
this moment? The poet no longer stands beneath 
the material heavens, and no sights or sounds that 
pass through the avenues of flesh and blood affect 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 227 

his mind. Yet he is as distinctly conscious in 
1892 as he was in 1802. He lives in a world as 
real as that of France, and is subject to an experi- 
ence as positive and clear as that which dilated 
him on the margin of the English Channel. If it 
were permitted him to embody his present emo- 
tions in the language of earth, the product would 
be as beautiful and thoughtful as the poetry of his 
loftiest moods here in time. 

Such is the right manner of thinking of the 
dead ; but do we spontaneously and easily think 
in this way ? Although the doctrine of immor- 
tality is a common truth, and the Christian espe- 
cially professes to believe it, yet those who have 
left this world are looked upon as having lost 
something by their departure from it. " Poor 
man, he is dead." How often do these words, 
coming without thought from our lips, show that 
we find this life more real and desirable than the 
other. We are obliged to correct our estimate by 
an after-thought, and reason ourselves into the 
conviction that to die is gain. Our first thought 
is not our best one. It is only the sober second 
thought which takes the true view of eternity as 
compared with time, of the world of spirits as 
compared with the world of matter. 

That the natural man should commit this error 
is not strange. He is absorbed in the interests of 
time and earth, and estimates everything by the 
five senses. He minds carnal things, and the eye 
of his soul is shut to things unseen and eternal. 
It is no wonder that for him the world beyond 



228 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

this is a dim and undiscovered country, and that 
the only real and desirable region for him is this 
solid ground underfoot and this blue sky overhead. 
When Ulysses seeks to cheer the ghost of Achilles, 
by reminding him of the glory he had acquired by 
his deeds on earth, he makes answer: "I would 
rather live on earth the hireling of a poor swain, 
than to be king of all the souls in Hades." But 
it is strange, and it betokens an imperfect spirit- 
uality, a remaining worldliness, when the Christian 
finds it so difficult to be touched and impressed 
by "the power of an endless life." Immortality 
for the believer in Christ ought to be so bright 
and glorious as to throw a splendid light over all 
the gloom and sorrow of earth. This was the 
effect of the doctrine upon the Early church. 
The resurrection of the Redeemer had made the 
truth real and vivid. The other world was not 
nearly so far from this as Ultima Thule was from 
Rome. When a fellow-Christian died, he slept, 
he rested in peace. He was not far from his 
fellow-disciples, and hence they remembered his 
death-day by a visit to his grave, as we remember 
a friend's birthday by a visit to his house. If the 
Church of the present possessed more of this feel- 
ing, it would be bolder and more courageous in 
the battle with sin and Satan, and less under the 
spell of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, 
and the pride of life. 

The Spirit of God employs various means to 
produce this unearthly temper in the souls of his 
people. Sometimes a dangerous sickness brings 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 229 

eternity very near, and makes this world as unreal 
as a dream, and the other world as real as the sol- 
id ground. Trials, losses, sorrows, and all the disci- 
pline of life, are used as instruments to this same 
end by the gracious Comforter. We can co-work 
with him by turning our reflections toward the 
world whither we are rapidly going. It is good to 
remember that the principal feature in human 
existence anywhere, be it in this world or in an- 
other, is consciousness. If a man thinks and feels, 
this is the main thing about him. Whether he 
does it in the body or out of the body is a second- 
ary matter, as it was in the instance when St. Paul 
was caught up to the third heavens and heard un- 
speakable things. Thought and feeling in the 
soul are no more necessarily confined to a partic- 
ular kind of body, than they are to a particular 
style of clothes. The believer will not have his 
resurrection body, like that of the glorified Re- 
deemer, until the day of judgment ; but it does 
not follow from this that he will have no con- 
sciousness in his disembodied spirit between death 
and the resurrection. Consciousness accompanies 
the spirit everywhere, and flows right on from 
time over into eternity, without a break. The 
peace and joy of the dying believer, to which he 
gives faint utterance in his expiring words, do not 
become extinct by his soul's leaving the body and 
passing away from earth. The shining stream of 
consciousness sinks out of the sight of those who 
remain here, only to reappear in greater brilliancy 
as it pours itself into the sunlit sea beyond. 



THE CERTAINTY OF FUTURE BLESSED- 
NESS 

In no respect is the superiority of the Christian 
religion over all other religions more apparent, 
than in the manner in which it prepares man for 
death. We will not compare it with the lower, 
but the higher and better paganism in proof. The 
death of Socrates, as described by Plato, is the fin- 
est example of a placid departure from time into 
eternity, which the annals of man outside of reve- 
lation afford. Let us contemplate it, and see how 
much it implies, and then contrast it with the death 
of a believer in Christ. In the Apology, Socrates 
is represented as speaking as follows : " To be 
afraid of death, O Athenians, is in fact nothing 
else than to seem to be wise when a man is not 
wise : for it is to seem to have a knowledge of 
things which a man does not know. For no man 
really knows whether death may not be to mortal 
men of all blessings perhaps the greatest ; and yet 
they do fear it as if they knew that it is the great- 
est of evils. And how, I ask, can this be other 
than the most shameful folly, to imagine that a 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 23 1 

man knows what he does not know ? " To appeal 
to the ignorance of man, is not to construct a 
strong argument. To say to him, " You do not 
know with certainty whether you shall experience 
pain or pleasure in the future world ; it may be, 
for aught you can tell, everlasting joy : why then 
do you fear ? " — to meet his anxiety about the end- 
less life hereafter with no better reasoning than this, 
is to excite his fears rather than to quell them. 
The interests at stake are so immense, that the 
mind cannot be satisfied with such a peradventure. 
Rabelais described his own religion as " a great 
perhaps." Such a happy immortality as this is " a 
great perhaps," and is poorly fitted to give the un- 
easy and apprehensive human soul the solace which 
it seeks when it thinks of the long existence which 
it is destined to live in the ages of eternity. 

But in this argument of Socrates, no account is 
taken of the fears that arise from a sense of guilt. 
Perhaps this argument from the ignorance of man 
respecting the future might have some force for 
one who was innocent, or was conscious of having 
done good in this life. Indeed, Socrates evidently 
supposes that this is the case. He says that he has 
"had the best reason to believe that a god or- 
dered him to spend his life in philosophizing, and 
in showing men how to live according to right rea- 
son." If now, he continues, he had, from fear of 
death, or from any other motive, left his post and 
disobeyed the god, this would have been a sin. 
And in this case he might well fear to die. But 
having obeyed the divine voice, he does not shrink 



232 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

from death, because it may bring a great joy in- 
stead of a great sorrow as most men fear it does. 
This reasoning implies a sense of innocence and 
righteousness upon the part of Socrates. How 
well founded and of what nature, we need not dis- 
cuss here. But suppose a man is not possessed of 
this feeling, but, on the contrary, is conscious of 
having transgressed the moral law, and is feeling 
the sting of guilt ? Then this argument, drawn 
from ignorance of what is in the future world, be- 
comes utterly worthless. To the statement, " You 
know not what the future contains, and therefore 
it may bring to you endless pleasure," the guilt- 
smitten spirit replies, " I am a transgressor of the 
divine law, and I fear the retributions of the fut- 
ure." 

But the truth is that the fear of death cannot be 
argued away by any method. Reasoning, good or 
bad, valid or weak, cannot give rest to the soul re- 
specting this solemn subject of immortality. Noth- 
ing but a direct and immediate consciousness of 
peace with God and acceptance with him can do 
this. And here the gospel shows its power. " I 
know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded 
that he is able to keep that which I have com- 
mitted unto him against that day. I am now 
ready to be offered, and the time of my departure 
is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have fin- 
ished my course, I have kept the faith. Hence- 
forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness." St. Paul, when he wrote these words, had 
the same kind of evidence for a blessed immortal- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 233 

ity that he had for his own existence. It was the 
evidence of consciousness. No man can prove his 
own existence by a syllogistical argument, because 
the premises of such an argument must be more 
certain than the conclusion, and no one can be 
more certain of anything than he is that he exists. 
And for the same reason a syllogistical argument 
in disproof of one's own existence cannot be con- 
structed. Now, a believer in Christ is possessed 
of an experience in regard to the future world 
which has the same kind of force. He cannot 
construct a proof that he shall enjoy a blessed life 
beyond the grave which will have the force of a 
mathematical proof, and neither can such a kind of 
argument be constructed as evidence against a hap- 
py immortality. Hence all the reasonings of Soc- 
rates and Plato upon this subject, although they 
favor the doctrine and go to render its truthfulness 
probable, cannot make it absolutely certain. Only 
that religion which is able to produce a consciousness 
in the soul itself, is competent to produce certainty. 
And this is done by the gospel of Christ. A be- 
liever's confidence of happiness hereafter springs 
out of his religious experience, and not out of his 
ratiocinations. When the divine life which Christ 
imparts is active, the disciple has a hope full of im- 
mortality. But when it wanes, doubts and fears 
come in. 

The secret, therefore, of an assured belief in a 
blessed future life, is an exalted and vigorous re- 
ligious experience. Since the whole force of the 
evidence for it consists in the person's conscious- 






234 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ness, it is necessary to have this consciousness. 
There must be a " taste of the heavenly gift," a 
sense of "the power of an endless life." But a 
taste, a sense, an experimental feeling is a gift of 
God. No man can give himself a consciousness of 
any kind. This is always a Divine product. A 
man's consciousness of his own existence is the 
work of his Maker. It is no arrangement or provi- 
sion of the man himself. And still more is it true 
that the consciousness of a believer is the product 
of God working in the soul. No man can fill 
himself with such a feeling as that which swelled 
the heart of St. Paul when he said, "I know 
whom I have believed." It comes only when the 
Holy Ghost sheds abroad the love of God in the 
heart. He then who would become independent 
of all arguments, either for or against a blessed 
immortality, and would have a direct and unassail- 
able conviction of the truth, must "walk in the 
Spirit," and thus "not fulfil the desires of the 
flesh." 



THE HABIT OF READING THE BIBLE 

The diary of the late John Quincy Adams af- 
fords interesting glimpses of the private life of a 
distinguished politician for upwards of a half cen- 
tury. The seventh volume allows us to enter 
the White House and see how a President of the 
United States spent his time, and discharged his 
duties, sixty years ago. Among other things, we 
learn that it was his habit in the summer season, 
to swim for an hour or so in the Potomac, before 
sunrise, and that in one instance when he at- 
tempted to swim across the river he narrowly es- 
caped losing his life by drowning. 

But the most interesting feature in President 
Adams's life is exhibited in the following extract 
from the diary — a diary, it should be remembered, 
which was written with the utmost freedom and 
intended to be seen by no eye but his own, and 
which has been sifted before publication of much 
which it would be improper to disclose to the 
world. The second Adams was a man of strong" 
political prejudices, and undoubtedly expressed 
his mind without reserve respecting political men, 



2$6 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

parties, and measures, but under the admirable 
supervision of his son, Charles Francis Adams, 
nothing appears that could wound the feelings of 
any. 

The extract is this : ".I rise usually between five 
and six — that is, at this time of the year, from an 
hour and a half to two hours before the sun. I 
walk by the light of the moon or stars, or none, 
about four miles, usually returning home in time 
to see the sun rise from the eastern chamber of 
the house. I then make my fire, and read three 
chapters in the Bible, with Scott s and Hewlets 
Commentaries" There are some points that are 
noticeable in respect to the passage which we have 
italicized. In the first place, the writer was not a 
Calvinist in his theological belief, yet he seeks to 
understand the Word of God by the aid of that 
plain and cogent interpreter who was the trust- 
ed friend of John Newton and William Cowper, 
and whose commentaries, though now somewhat 
displaced by others, yet contributed as much as 
any other uninspired production to the spread of 
evangelical religion in Great Britain and America. 
In his theological opinions, the second Adams 
seems to have been an Arian in regard to the di- 
vinity of Christ, and an opponent of the doctrine 
of vicarious atonement. But his early religious 
education, together with a sense of accountability 
to God which he carried with him continually, and 
which led him to take a solemn view of human 
life here below, made him not unwilling to read 
his Bible by the light of a commentator with 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 237 

whom upon some important subjects he had lit- 
tle sympathy, but with whose opinions respecting 
the more general aspects of morality and religion 
he found himself agreeing. The earlier form of 
Unitarianism which is represented by such men as 
Adams, retained many of the serious and solemn 
elements of that orthodox faith from which it had 
departed not abruptly but gradually. The belief 
in the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, 
in the miraculous conception though not divine 
nature of Jesus Christ, and in a state of future 
rewards and punishments, led men of this stamp 
to read their Bible, to keep the Sabbath, and to 
strive to live an upright and moral life. It is to 
be feared that at the present time there are many 
political men whose theological creed is nearer to 
the teaching of Scripture than was that of John 
Quincy Adams, who yet do not rise early in the 
morning to read three chapters of the Bible with 
the help of Scott's Commentary. 

And this leads us to notice a second point re- 
garding this extract from the diary. It is that 
this politician and statesman of an elder day went 
to the Scriptures for all his information upon the 
subject of religion. He believed that if the secret 
of human destiny cannot be cleared up by the 
Bible, it cannot be cleared up at all. The thought 
of going to the Vedas, or to the writings of Con- 
fucius or Sakyamuni, for information by which to 
be guided through this world into another, would 
have seemed to him to be the height of absurdity. 
The difference between the earlier and later So- 



238 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

cinianism of New England in this respect is very 
great. The fathers when they wanted religion be- 
took themselves to the Scriptures of the Christian 
Church ; the children, some of them, at least, be- 
take themselves to the sacred books of India and 
China. 

There is no habit of more real value to any man, 
be he public or private, than this of the sixth 
President of the United States. It is to be feared 
that partly on account of the excessive multiplica- 
tion of religious books, even those who have been 
religiously educated do not maintain the habit 
with the regularity and pertinacity of an earlier 
generation. He who can take down the English 
Bible and read consecutively three chapters, and 
find intellectual stimulus, to say nothing of mor- 
al and spiritual edification, in so doing, thereby 
evinces that he has a robust understanding. This 
is one secret of that good, hard sense, that down- 
right honesty, that bold integrity bordering some- 
times upon bluntness, which are seen in the states- 
men of the honest and the heroic age in our na- 
tional history. 



A LITTLE RELIGION IS A DANGEROUS 

THING 

"A little learning," says Bacon, "is a danger- 
ous thing." So likewise is a little religion. If it 
be good advice to a student to bid him drink 
deep or taste not the fountain of science, it is 
equally good advice to a man to bid him be 
thorough in religion, or else let it alone. Our 
Lord so instructs, when he says, " Either make the 
tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree 
corrupt, and his fruit corrupt." What then are 
some of the dangers of a little religion ? They 
are both speculative and practical. 

A superficial religion raises difficult questions, 
but does not furnish their answers. There is just 
knowledge enough to cause the person to perceive 
the objections to the doctrines of Christianity, but 
not sufficient experience of the power of these 
doctrines in the heart to silence them. Take for 
illustration the doctrine of atonement. He whose 
faith in Christ's blood is weak, because his sense 
of sin is slight, will be the subject of painful 
doubts, at times, respecting the reality and reason- 



240 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ableness of this cardinal truth. Had he a pro- 
found and unwavering confidence in Christ, he 
would be able to quell these suspicions concern- 
ing this part of divine revelation. There is no 
answer to a sceptical doubt equal to an immediate 
consciousness ; but no one can have this upon any 
subject if he is superficial. Consciousness is a 
personal sense and feeling, and it is impossible for 
a sceptic to gain ground when this is in his way. 
If a man's belief in the atonement is mainly the 
result of reasoning, if he holds this tenet chiefly by 
dint of argument, there will be times when his 
faith will waver ; and if there be nothing more 
than this to steady it, in the end he will fail to re- 
tain his hold. But if, like St. Paul, he can say, 
" I know whom I have believed, and I am per- 
suaded that he is able to keep that which I have 
committed unto him against that day," like the 
great apostle, he will be proof against all the wiles 
of error and infidelity. St. Paul endured many 
temptations, but there is nothing in all his writ- 
ings that suggests in the least the thought that 
possibly he may have been the subject of sceptical 
doubts. John the Baptist wavered and queried, 
and sent two of his disciples, saying, " Art thou he 
that should come, or do we look for another ? " 
But St. Paul, from the day that he saw Christ on 
the way to Damascus, never doubted for a mo- 
ment that he was the eternal Redeemer. 

It is the remark of Augustine, if we mistake 
not, that there is no more dangerous period in the 
history of the Church than that in which questions 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 24 1 

are raised, but are not answered. If this be true, 
we are now living in a dangerous time. The 
capacity for doubt is greater than the capacity for 
removing doubt. And if any one is hasty to con- 
clude that this is a sign of great intellectual abil- 
ity, let him remember the homely proverb that 
" any fool can ask a question, but only a wise man 
can answer it." The infidelity which filters through 
the community so extensively arises very much 
from a superficial apprehension. The doubt 
whether prayer is efficacious is started by the 
objection that God is immutable, or that the Di- 
vine Being cannot be supposed to concern him- 
self with the interests of a single individual. But 
these objections would have no force for a mind 
that took a deeper view of the divine immutability, 
and saw that immutability does not mean insen- 
sibility ; or that perceived that for the Divine in- 
finitude there is nothing great or small, but that 
all things alike being the creatures of God are 
alike the objects of his providential care. Neither 
would they have force for one who was in the 
habit of daily fervent prayer. He who pours out 
his soul to God, and finds spiritual refreshment 
and evident answers to his petitions in his personal 
experience, cannot be shaken by infidel objections. 
There may be some aspects of the subject which 
are mysterious to him, and there may be some 
questions which he cannot answer, but he will not 
permit the unknown to nullify the known. 
" Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not. One 

thing I know, that whereas I was blind now I 
16 



242 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

see." This was good reasoning. No man can 
surrender his belief in facts of personal experi- 
ence, however dim or uncertain may be his knowl- 
edge of the remote and hidden causes of these 
facts. 

The age needs, therefore, two things : first, a 
deeper religious knowledge, and, second, a deeper 
religious experience. The two go together. It is 
interesting to observe how free from all morbid 
experiences and distressing doubts have been all 
the strong and earnest minds in Christian history. 
Luther and Calvin give no signs of the tremor of 
unbelief. They held the doctrines of Christianity 
in what would be denominated their severest and 
most difficult form. The doctrines of original sin 
and predestination are better calculated than al- 
most any others to baffle explanation, and to en- 
gender scepticism. But these doctrines enter 
thoroughly into the Early Lutheran and Calvinistic 
schemes. They are not softened down from the 
Scripture representation, but are presented in their 
sharpness. Yet neither of these Reformers stag- 
gers in unbelief ; and what is yet more, they never 
appear to feel any difficulties. In this respect, 
they are like their Lord and Master, who, after 
saying that he goes to death in the way that is 
predetermined, immediately adds, that the human 
instrument by which the Divine decree is fulfilled 
is so free and so guilty that it would have been 
better for him if he had never been born. 



NOT WEALTH, BUT COMPETENCE 

The present generation of Christians is too busy 
to be highly religious. In order to deep piety, 
there must be leisure for reading God's Word and 
religious books, and opportunity for reflection upon 
divine things. The mind cannot do two things at 
once. If a Christian is engaged from morning to 
night solely in the prosecution of business, it is 
impossible that he should bring his heart into 
contact with things unseen and eternal ; and with- 
out such a contact his piety must be feeble and 
faint. But the present mode of living, especially 
in large cities, is such that all classes are driven by 
worldly occupations, and no time is left for higher 
and better reflections. The last generation of 
merchants were more favorably situated than the 
present, for the cultivation of the soul. Fifty years 
ago the merchant lived near his place of business, 
took his meals with his family, spent his evenings 
in his own home, and enjoyed the privileges of his 
church and the intercourse of a sober-minded and 
thoughtful circle of friends and neighbors. He 
had leisure for meditation upon his soul and its 



244 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

needs. The consequence was, that he was a more 
devout person than his successor. The churches 
of the last generation were blessed with revivals of 
religion, and religion penetrated all classes of so- 
ciety more generally than it now does. 

How then can the evil be remedied ? How shall 
the disciple of Christ gain time for the study of 
God's Word and for private devotion ? By re- 
trenching his business. Good men are laying too 
broad plans for the acquisition of wealth. They 
have set their aim too high. The amount of money 
which they deem necessary for their families is far 
too great. Here is the root of the evil that rami- 
fies so widely. The Christian father of a family 
has put hundreds of thousands where he should 
have put tens, and thousands where he should have 
put hundreds, in his estimate of the property which 
he ought to accumulate. Any careful reader of 
the Bible will see that competency, and not wealth, 
is the goal that is set up for the church-member. 
He is commanded to provide for his family so that 
they may not be dependent and poor. Further 
than this, he is not commanded and he is not per- 
mitted to go. Agur's prayer is the prayer for him : 
" Give me neither poverty nor riches." They that 
desire to be rich fall into many hurtful snares that 
drown men in perdition. The love of money is 
the root of much of the evil that is now afflicting 
the Church of Christ. 

Suppose that the present generation of Chris- 
tian merchants should substitute independence for 
wealth, in their estimate of what their business 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 245 

life should bring them — what would be the result ? 
The immediate consequence would be, more repose 
of mind and more leisure. The great strain which 
is knocking down so many men with apoplexy and 
paralysis at the age of fifty, would be taken off. 
A man can acquire a competency without any con- 
vulsive effort. But to become a millionaire, he 
must make spasmodic endeavors. Prudence, in- 
dustry, and economy, with the Divine blessing 
(and the Divine blessing travels this road), will 
render any man independent in his circumstances. 
But these are qualities that do not so absorb all 
the time and energy as to leave no remainder for 
other objects and aims. The daily life of an inde- 
pendent man, who lives within his means, and in- 
tends that his children shall do the same after 
him, is a noble and honorable one. It has nothing 
of the meanness and vulgarity of the devotee of 
wealth and fashion. There is no struggle either to 
be or to appear rich, but the calm and self-pos- 
sessed bearing of one who owes no man anything 
but to love one another. Some one remarks that 
" equality, in the cant of politics, means the wish 
to be equal to one's superiors, and to be superior 
to one's equals." This is also the spirit of the 
purse-proud. It is not the spirit of a true repub- 
lican, a true gentleman, or a true Christian. 

It is the first step that costs. And in bringing 
about a change in the church, or in a church- 
member, the first thing is also the most difficult — 
viz. : to determine to accept competence in lieu of 
wealth. The moment the disciple of Christ has 



246 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

resolved in the strength of Christ not to become 
rich, but only to become independent in his cir- 
cumstances, the hardest part of the work is done. 
It is the large wealth that is in the dim distance, 
that is luring on the professed disciple of him who 
had not where to lay his head. If instead of the 
hundreds of thousands, he would substitute the tens 
of thousands, he would find his life more even 
tempered, more happy, and more useful. Should 
Christ appear on earth and speak the word most 
needed in the present juncture, it would be the 
words which he addressed to Martha: "Thou art 
troubled about many things." 



DENOMINATIONAL UNITY UNDESIRABLE 

Evangelical Christendom is composed of 
Christians whose creed is either that of Calvin 
or that of Arminius. Those persons who cannot 
adopt the fundamental views of one or the other 
of these theological leaders, must be counted out. 
They are not ''evangelical," because they reject 
the doctrine of Christ's divinity and of forgive- 
ness through his atonement — doctrines common to 
all Trinitarians. The various evangelical denom- 
inations, therefore, though some of them do not 
adopt everything in Calvinism, and others of them 
not everything in Arminianism, are yet fairly 
enough ranged under these two types of theology. 
In some churches, as the Episcopalian, for exam- 
ple, both in Great Britain and America, both 
forms of doctrine are tolerated, though both forms 
are not contained in the Thirty-nine Articles. In 
others, as the Methodist, pure and simple Armin- 
ianism is the ruling faith ; in others, as the Pres- 
byterian and the Reformed, pure and simple Cal- 
vinism has been the creed and the experience of 
the general membership. Go through evangelical 



248 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

Christendom and examine the religious experience 
of every man who hopes to be saved by the blood 
and righteousness of Christ, and it will be found 
to have either the Calvinistic or the Arminian 
shape and tinge. The individual himself may not 
be aware of the tinge, but it is there, produced 
by the religious education which he has received 
from his parents, and the ministry of the Church 
to which he belongs. 

Would it be for the interest of Christ's king- 
dom here upon earth, to unite all these evangeli- 
cal denominations into a single body ? Would it 
speed the progress of the gospel through this sinful 
world, to bring Arminians and Calvinists together 
in a single denomination ? We say No, and will 
mention a reason. It is not the only reason, but 
it is a strong one. It would be impossible to edu- 
cate and license a ministry for such a complex 
denomination. The power of a religious body, so 
far as human agency is concerned, depends upon 
its religious teachers. Hence, the most important 
part of a church's work consists in training its 
clergy. All the rest of the work of a denomina- 
tion, in planting churches at home and abroad, 
and caring for them, will be an utter failure if 
its ministry is uneducated and weak. Each and 
every ecclesiastical denomination consequently 
takes special pains, by institutions, faculties of 
instruction, and large endowments, to provide for 
ministerial education. But supposing a union of 
Calvinists and Arminians, what shall be the sys- 
tem of doctrine taught in its theological schools? 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 249 

Who shall be appointed to deliver lectures in 
divinity to the classes ? If Arminianism were 
selected, it would be impossible for conscientious 
and earnest Calvinists to acquiesce in this arrange- 
ment. If Calvinism were selected, it would be 
equally impossible for conscientious and earnest 
Arminians to be satisfied. There would be con- 
flict in the new denomination immediately regard- 
ing that one subject, the training of ministers, 
which more than any other is fitted to agitate a 
religious organization to the inmost. But some 
ingenious person may suggest that a compromise 
creed might be manufactured — a compound of 
the two systems. This is an impossibility. Ar- 
minianism and Calvinism, though having an evan- 
gelical substratum in common, both alike " hold- 
ing the head" — namely, that Christ is God, and 
that his blood is the only atonement for sin — yet 
differ upon certain subjects connected with these 
vital truths, in such a clear and decided manner 
that the only union between them must be by 
transubstantiation. The one must convert the 
other, or the other must convert the one. The 
mixture of both is bad. We are Calvinists, but 
we do not hesitate to say that Arminianism, pure 
and simple, frank and manly, is far preferable to 
Calvinism modified by Arminian elements. And 
we doubt not that an intelligent Arminian would 
say that outspoken and unequivocal Calvinism, is 
much better than Arminianism dashed with the 
bitter bowls of decrees and predestination. And 
the reason is, that there is honesty upon both sides 



250 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

when the pure and simple system, without attempt 
at admixture, is presented. Honest and open- 
minded men respect each other, while they differ, 
and in their differences. But in all attempts to 
mix the immiscible, there must be more or less 
of management, finesse, and intrigue. Insincerity 
and hypocrisy, unconsciously, if not intentionally, 
creep in. One party strives to outwit the other, 
and the result is a quarrelsome married life, end- 
ing in a divorce. 

It is plain that to unite evangelical denomina- 
tions having such settled and distinct doctrinal 
differences as the Methodists and Presbyterians, 
for example, would be the destruction of theologi- 
cal education in the united body. They could not 
educate a clergy ; and they could not license them, 
if they could have them educated outside of the 
denomination. Imagine a candidate for the min- 
istry appearing before an ecclesiastical body com- 
posed about equally of conscientious adherents of 
Wesley and Calvin ! The answers satisfactory to 
one division must be unsatisfactory to the other ; 
and the young minister could not go forth with 
the cordial approbation and support of the entire 
body. 

But while organic and ecclesiastical union be- 
tween the Arminian and Calvinistic worlds is both 
impossible and undesirable, the moral and spiritual 
union, which is grounded in a common trust in 
the Divine Redeemer and his atoning blood, is 
both possible and actual. There is, to-day, a 
better understanding between the pious Methodist 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 25 1 

and the pious Presbyterian, and a more hearty 
and generous love for each other as brethren in 
the Lord, as they now are, in two denominations, 
than there would be if they were in one. Two 
families, each living in its own house, have more 
affection and less friction than two families living 
under one roof. And the reason is, that, by this 
arrangement, the peculiarities and preferences of 
one family do not clash with those of the other. 
Each sees the good qualities of the other, while 
the disagreeable traits of each are not observed. 
And this would be equally true if the supposed 
families were blood relations. So is it with the 
different branches of Christ's household. Within 
the province of practical life and experience, there 
is union and harmony among all of Christ's true 
disciples. The prayer-meeting, benevolent work, 
and social intercourse elicit a common feeling, 
and all evangelical denominations flow together. 
But within the province of theory and systematic 
instruction, the disciples of Christ do not yet all 
see eye to eye, and it is within this province that 
conflict and collision arise. Hence, it is best that 
an ecclesiastical union should not be brought about 
between those who know that they have these 
differences. For an ecclesiastical organization, 
unlike a union conference in a common benevo- 
lent enterprise, brings into view the speculative 
aspects of religion ; the whole great subject of the 
ministry, and the creed which the ministry shall 
preach. But the acts of public worship and of 
cooperation in missionary labors, relate only to the 



252 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

practical aspects of religion, and respecting these 
the great mass of communicants, the brotherhood 
at large, in all the evangelical churches, can and do 
mingle with each other in fraternal love and con- 
fidence. Even their suspicions are more amusing 
than serious. A pious old lady, of the Calvinistic 
faith, remarked concerning her son who had 
joined the Methodist Church : " He is as good a 
son as ever lived, but I hate him, he is such an 
Arminian." Such " hatred" as this would not 
prove to be a very serious bar to communion 
between the Christian mother and the Christian 
son. It is a very different thing from the odium 
theologicum, which is much more certain to arise 
between opposing parties in one ecclesiastical de- 
nomination, than between two distinct and strong 
denominations each respecting the other, and each 
doing its appointed work until the time arrive 
when there "shall be one flock and one shepherd." 
The recent attempt to introduce an alien and 
anti-Calvinistic theology into the Northern Pres- 
byterian Church, strongly illustrates the divisive 
nature of a dual theology in a single denomina- 
tion. The plain antagonism between the doctrine 
of the Briggs Inaugural and that of the Westmin- 
ster Standards was immediately perceived by the 
great mass of the denomination, and the former 
was condemned as heresy by an overwhelming 
majority. To permit its inculcation in the theo- 
logical seminaries, and its spread amongst the 
ministry, was seen to be suicidal. The unanimity 
of the Church in its decision to adhere to its an- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 253 

cestral faith, made this attempt of a party to effect 
a departure from it comparatively harmless. But 
had the " liberal theology" proved to have been 
the doctrine of half of the body, there would have 
been a division into two denominations. As the 
case now stands, the number of malcontents will 
probably diminish, and those who upon the second 
sober thought cannot sincerely adopt the public 
sentiment of the Church will seek other ecclesias- 
tical connections, if they are honorable and self- 
respecting. But even a division of the denom- 
ination would be better for both parties, than the 
continuance of both under one organization with 
an internecine conflict in creed and measures. 



AN AMERICAN FAULT 

The people of the United States, to a spectator, 
are political in their tendency. They are agitated 
by the ballot more than by anything else. They 
choose a president once in every four years, and 
the interval between is filled up with scores of 
elections, from that of governor to constable. 
Irving, in one of his humorous papers, speaking of 
the Frenchman's propensity for dancing, calculates 
that the Frenchman, owing to this custom, spends 
at least one-fourth of his time in the air. By a 
similar calculation, it might perhaps be found that 
an American citizen spends a tenth of his time in 
electing officers. 

It is a good thing for a nation, as it is for an 
individual, to confess its faults. The most un- 
favorable symptom in the case of the American, 
is his unwillingness to acknowledge that the peo- 
ple to whom he belongs have any defects. He is 
quick to discover the evils of monarchy and aris- 
tocracy, but he is blind to those of democracy. 
And among these latter evils that of excessive de- 
votion to the business of self-government is per- 
haps the greatest. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 255 

In the first place, it leads to a false estimate of 
politics itself, as compared with other subjects. 
Would it be rash to say that the majority of the 
American people prefer political distinction to 
distinction in letters, art, science, and religion ? 
Go through the country and ask the aspiring 
young man which he would prefer to be, president 
of the United States, or author of Paradise Lost, 
and in four instances out of five the answer would 
be : president of the United States. Try him by 
a similar inquiry respecting the relative importance 
of politics and fine art, politics and science, and 
politics and religion, and a similar reply would be 
given. Those who have young men under their 
care are struck with this strange propensity to 
over-estimate an inferior department like politics, 
and under-estimate a superior one like literature. 
The college professor often sees a youth of fine 
talents and opportunities turning away from " the 
high-erected thoughts and planet-like music " of 
Plato and Shakespeare, and descending to the low 
level of a partisan newspaper and a partisan legis- 
lature, for the arena in which to work his mind 
and employ his collegiate training. 

Now, this estimate is utterly false. Political 
reputation and influence, compared with literary, 
are ephemeral. In the days of Queen Elizabeth, 
the great name in English politics was that of 
Lord Burleigh ; and his name was in every mouth. 
Contemporary with him there was a writer of 
plays whose name was then unknown out of a 
narrow circle connected with the theatre. His 



256 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

name was William Shakespeare. Who hears now 
of Burleigh, or has heard of him for two cen- 
turies ? But even the most unlettered of poli- 
ticians has heard of Shakespeare. Compare the 
present and future influence and reputation of 
Robert Peel and William Wordsworth ; of Glad- 
stone and Tennyson; of Thomas Jefferson and 
Jonathan Edwards; and it is easy to see that de- 
votion to politics is a waste of mental power, in 
comparison with devotion to letters and religion. 

And the reason is this : government is nowadays 
concerned with merely the person and the property. 
It cares for the earthly and secular interests of 
mankind. Whoever, therefore, devotes himself to 
this subject exclusively and alone, is busied with 
inferior affairs alone. He is looking after the 
farm and the merchandise ; and unless he can 
bring into his politics something from a higher 
quarter, he will be like Bunyan's man with a 
muckrake who never looks up into the sky, but 
continually looks down into the dirt in which he 
is raking. When the young man who has re- 
ceived a liberal education turns the whole native 
force and all the acquired discipline of his intel- 
lect to the discussion of such themes as tariffs, 
patent-rights, banking, trade, manufactures, and 
the like, he is really descending into a province 
only one step above that of the day-laborer and 
artisan. There is nothing in such subjects that is 
fitted to elevate or widen his mind. And still 
more, if he bends all his power to the furtherance 
of merely partisan designs, if he absorbs all his 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 257 

energy in the mere arts of a demagogue, does he 
waste and degrade his intellect. We know that 
the old Greek idea of politics made it something 
nobler than this. But it was because that under 
the Grecian constitutions the interests of religion 
and learning were identified with those of govern- 
ment. But under the democratical constitution 
of the United States, owing to the jealousy of 
contending sects and the fear that learning is aris- 
tocratic, religion and letters are divorced from 
politics, so that nothing is left to government but 
the management of purely material interests. 
Hence, instead of the ancient statesman, we have 
the modern politician. The political arena is no 
longer graced by the presence of men of compre- 
hensive knowledge and finished education. The 
Everetts and Legares have long ago ceased to go 
to Congress. 

A second evil of this extreme inclination to po- 
litical life in the American people, is the decline 
of letters and religion. The mental energy being 
absorbed in the struggle to attain office and to 
keep it when attained, nothing is left that can be 
applied to higher themes. There is no surer way 
to deaden a young man's interest in the elegant 
ideas of literature, or the solemn ideas of religion, 
than to nominate him as a candidate for political 
honors, and run him in the race for them. The 
taste begins to grow vulgar, the instant the still 
air of delightful studies is deserted for the foul air 
of the caucus and the popular assembly. This 
process is going on continually, and one needs 
17 



258 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

only open his eyes to see it. Political circles, as 
they appear at the state and national capitals, with 
some few exceptions, are composed of persons 
upon whom a finished essay in letters, or a pro- 
found lecture in morals, would be wasted and lost. 
They are not in the mood for such discourse. And 
whoever joins these circles and remains in them 
imbibes the same spirit. He may have come 
from the refined and thoughtful society which is 
still to be found in those portions of the land 
where the institutions of religion and learning 
exert their elevating influence, and may resolve in 
his own mind to carry his religion and his litera- 
ture into politics ; but the current proves to be 
too strong for him, and he must either get out of 
it or be carried along with it. 

What shall be done in the case ? it will be asked. 
The ministry have a duty ; and this is to rectify 
the public opinion upon this subject. Let them 
instil into the minds of the young men the old 
doctrine, that no vocation is so honorable as that 
of a clergyman or teacher ; that next to this stands 
the lawyer and physician ; and that next to these 
professions stands some legitimate and useful oc- 
cupation or business. When this shall once more 
be the public opinion, as it was in the earlier and 
better era in our history, then the professions and 
the ranks of business men will once more be filled 
up with educated and upright citizens, from whom 
the officers of government will be chosen, not be- 
cause they wish for office, but because they are fit for 
office, and the people desire them to be their rulers. 



POLITICAL FANATICISM 

The dictionary defines a fanatic to be "a relig- 
ious enthusiast ; a visionary ; one who indulges 
wild and extravagant notions of religion." It 
does not seem to have occurred to the lexicogra- 
pher that fanaticism may exist in other provinces 
than that of religion, and that wild and extrava- 
gant notions may be indulged respecting temporal 
as well as eternal things. Religion is not the 
only subject that may be abused by the visionary 
and enthusiast. There is fanaticism in trade and 
business. The stock market often presents this 
appearance. The brokers' board is sometimes a 
rabble of wild fanatics. No excesses of a negro 
camp-meeting are greater than those which are 
sometimes witnessed in Broad Street or the Paris 
Bourse. Men have died from excitement about 
money, as they have from excitement about re- 
ligion. Constitutions have been shattered by the 
strain upon the nerves caused by the fear of los- 
ing wealth, as they have been by the strain pro- 
duced by the fear of hell. 

There is fanaticism in politics also, and to this 



260 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

we would direct attention for a moment. We do 
not by any means deny that government is of 
great importance, and that a proper degree of in- 
terest in its administration is a duty. Patriotism, 
though not piety, any more than family affection 
is holiness, is an instinctive feeling implanted by 
the Creator that is amiable and attractive. It be- 
longs to man's constitution, and is to be cultivat- 
ed and especially to be sanctified. But one chief 
mode of cultivating and sanctifying the sentiment 
is to moderate it. If it be allowed to become 
rampant and drive out other and higher senti- 
ments and subjects, then patriotism becomes fa- 
naticism, and this fanaticism is wrong. Its utter- 
ance is : " My country right or wrong ; my party 
right or wrong." The claims of a man's country 
are inferior to the claims of God upon him. Poli- 
tics is second to religion. Hence if a man devote 
his time, his strength, and his thoughts so exces- 
sively to the political party to which he belongs as 
to neglect the concerns of his own soul and the 
religious welfare of his family and society, then his 
so-called patriotism is a sin. 

Now, looking over the field of American poli- 
tics we think that any candid observer must say 
that there is much political fanaticism in the 
American people. The annual elections in the 
several States, or in the country at large, excite 
the population unduly and extravagantly. There 
is no reason in the state of the case for such an 
excitement every twelve months. If it were a 
great crisis in the history of the people, such as 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 26 1 

that of the late war, imperilling the existence of 
the government, there would be more excuse for 
such an absorption in politics. But the questions 
that arise in a time of peace at an annual election, 
relate only to secondary matters which are not 
vital to the existence of the American Union. 
What man in his senses believes that if the party 
favoring specie payment gets the rule, the Amer- 
ican Republic will really and actually be broken 
up and cease to be one of the nations of the earth ? 
And what sane man will assert that if the party of 
inflation obtains power, the experiment of self- 
government will have proved to be a failure in the 
United States ? More or less of specie, more or 
less of paper money, are not the things that decide 
the destiny of this republic. The same questions 
might be put respecting the tariff. Is it impossi- 
ble for the nation to live under a high tariff ? 
Must it of necessity die under a low one ? And 
yet the great mass of the American people, in an 
election, act as if these matters of money and tem- 
poral prosperity were of more consequence than 
all others, and as if one policy or the other were 
the only possible and allowable policy. Politics 
differs from religion in this particular, namely, that 
several ways may be allowed, and if a mistake is 
made it can be corrected. Government is an un- 
certain and experimental science. It is often dif- 
ficult to say which is the better of two proposi- 
tions, or two measures. Nothing but the trial 
will decide. Men may therefore properly differ 
in politics. But religion is fixed in its principles 



262 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

and methods, and men may not properly differ in 
religion. There is only one name given under 
heaven among men whereby they must be saved. 
Religion is not an uncertain and experimental 
science. It is drawn out in black and white in a 
written volume. If a mistake is made in religion, 
it cannot be corrected. A man may be whig or 
tory, republican or democrat, and be a truly good 
man in the sight of God. But a man cannot be 
christian or infidel, a believer in Christ or a re- 
jecter of Christ, and be a truly good man in the 
sight of God. 

The great defect in American politics is fanati- 
cism. Let your moderation in politics be known 
to all men, is the true maxim for the people. It 
will be a happy day when the masses of our citi- 
zens shall be as greatly excited upon the subject 
of morals and religion as they now are upon poli- 
tics, and as moderate in their political excitements 
as they now are in their religious. 






THE DANGERS OF OFFICE-HOLDING 

The motto upon the escutcheon of the Earl of 
Lonsdale is, Magistratus indicat virum : the mag- 
istracy shows the man. Office-holding is a test of 
character. He who can resist the temptations to 
injustice, fraud, deceit, and self-aggrandizement 
generally, which beset one who either inherits of- 
fice or obtains it by the popular suffrage, is un- 
questionably a person of deep convictions of truth, 
and of high moral principle. For this reason, 
public life would not be sought by one who dis- 
trusts himself. He who puts up the petition, 
" Lead me not into temptation," would be thank- 
ful for the providence that should forever keep 
him in the quiet and independent walks of private 
life. Should the will of God oblige him to as- 
sume the responsibility of a judge, a magistrate, or 
a legislator, he would enter upon them, not be- 
cause he preferred them, but because duty must 
be discharged toward God. It was in this spirit 
that the better class of public men, in the early 
and better era in American history, entered upon 
office. Washington, had his inclination been his 



264 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

guide, would not have accepted office. The peo- 
ple forced it upon him. And before he would 
have employed money to secure his election, be- 
fore he would have even solicited a vote from a 
fellow-citizen, much as he loved his country, he 
would have seen it the prey of all manner of evil. 

But this is not the present estimate of public 
office. Men do not shrink from it as calculated 
to put a great strain upon their morality and in- 
tegrity, but they rush in crowds, and almost to a 
man, after its emoluments and honors. The peo- 
ple of the United States are a nation of office- 
seekers, as much as the English, according to Na- 
poleon, were a nation of shopkeepers. No one 
stops to consider the risks to character and morals 
which he incurs by getting office, but strains every 
muscle to obtain what he thinks to be a prize. 
This spirit has been dominant for many years in 
the nation. It has increased with fearful rapidity 
during the last few years. It now threatens the 
destruction of the republic. Unless there be a 
change in this respect, democracy in America will 
go the way of all democracy in the past. Repub- 
lics, in history, have been short-lived, and nothing 
but very decided integrity and moral purity can 
make the United States an exception to the gen- 
eral fact. 

The dangers of office-holding in this country 
have now become so great that no one is fit to 
hold office who does not realize them. Show us 
a man who has no fears of the bribery, the im- 
morality, the irreligion which prevail in the party 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 265 

caucus which now controls all nominations and 
decides all elections, and we will show you an 
American citizen who ought not to take office. 
The recent exposure at Washington of what has 
been going on in the dark for some time, shows 
that the instant a man leaves the privacy of his 
home and of the district to which he belongs, and 
goes to the national capital, he is assailed by temp- 
tation of the lowest and basest kind. Doubtless 
some of those who have fallen under these temp- 
tations were persons of some conscience and mor- 
al principle when they left private life for pub- 
lic position ; while others were probably tainted 
at the start. But the movement was downward 
with both classes. 

But what is the remedy for this state of things ? 
The cure, if it come at all, must begin with a 
sense and acknowledgment of the disease. They 
that are whole need not a physician ; and they 
who think and say that they are whole do not ap- 
ply to a physician. All men are optimists, and 
none more so than Americans. There is an obsti- 
nate conviction in their minds that all will turn 
out well for republics and republican institutions. 
Aristocracies and monarchies are destined to de- 
struction, but universal suffrage, like gravitation, 
will hold all things to the centre and keep them 
firm. Though there may be venality in State and 
national legislatures, and public officers may be 
fraudulent and vicious, yet the inherent vigor of 
popular government will in the end triumph over 
all those evils which have destroyed other govern- 



266 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ments. But this optimism will prove to be fatal. 
A strong and good government cannot be secured 
by merely throwing ballots into a box. The mere 
form of government is not sufficient to secure 
protection to life and property. The city of New 
York has a democratic form of government, pure 
and simple, and yet human life is less safe under 
it than it is in London or Berlin ; and the recent 
robbery of the city treasury by the Tweed adminis- 
tration has reached to an amount unheard of in the 
history of the world. Those who refuse to take 
counsel of fear, and have no apprehension lest the 
experiment of self-government in the United 
States prove to be a failure, are taking the sure 
course to make it such. A wise and serious anx- 
iety ought to be the temper of an American citi- 
zen in the present attitude and aspect of Ameri- 
can politics. The stream cannot rise above its 
fountain-head. The ballot of universal suffrage 
cannot be any purer than the constituency that 
casts it. And if that constituency become, in the 
majority, ignorant, vicious, and godless, then the 
problem of self-government becomes insoluble. 
Democracy, in this case, is self-government with 
the devil for the self. 



THE UNION AND THE WAR 



Psalm 118:6, 7. " The Lord is on my side ; I will not fear : 
what can man do unto me ? The Lord taketh my part with them 
that help me : therefore shall I see my desire upon them that 
hate me." 



This is a portion of a psalm that was indited 
most probably by King David, to be sung upon a 
day of thanksgiving by the people of Israel, as 
they moved in solemn and jubilant procession to 
the temple of the Most High, to offer praise for a 
great national deliverance. We do not know the 
particular occasion, the precise victory, that in- 
spired this sacred anthem. Some commentators 
think they find internal evidence that David could 
not have been its author, and that it was com- 
posed, on the return from the exile, for the dedi- 
cation of the second temple. But there are many 
chapters in the life of the royal harper that were 
fitted to inspire such a psalm of deliverance ; and 
it accords well with similar thanksgivings in the 
book of Psalms that are universally ascribed to his 

] A Discourse delivered in the Brick Church, New York, No- 
vember 27, 1862. 



268 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

authorship. Be this as it may, it is an inspired 
lyric that expresses clearly and strongly the jubi- 
lance of the people of God when his arm has 
wrought deliverance for them ; and in every age 
it has been an anthem through which they have 
uttered their praises when the right hand of the 
Lord was exalted, and when the right hand of the 
Lord did valiantly for his church. It is also a 
thanksgiving psalm for an individual, as well as a 
nation. Those heroes of the Christian church, 
those confessors, martyrs, and reformers who have 
been called to great sorrows and to great triumphs 
in their own personal experiences, have betaken 
themselves to this one hundred and eighteenth 
psalm as the trumpet through which they sounded 
out their glorying in the God that had helped 
them and had given them the victory. Martin 
Luther, we are told, appropriated this psalm for 
his peculiar comfort, and wrote the seventeenth 
verse of it ("I shall not die, but live and declare 
the works of the Lord ") upon the walls of his 
study, saying, " This is my psalm which I love. 
Though I love all the psalms and the Scriptures, 
and regard them as the comfort of my life, yet I 
have had such experience of this psalm, that it 
must remain, and shall be called, my psalm ; for it 
has been very precious to me, has delivered me 
out of many troubles, and without it neither em- 
peror, kings, the wise and prudent, nor saints, 
could have helped me." 

In reading this psalm, it will be observed that 
the strong and firm foundation upon which the re- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 269 

joicing and the thanksgiving rest, is the fact that 
God had been upon the side of the victors ; and 
this implies that truth and right were upon their 
side. David and the people of Israel did not re- 
joice merely because they had "quenched" the 
nations that had "compassed them about like 
bees," as a man quenches the flashy " fire of 
thorns." It was not the secular and vainglorious 
rejoicing of a warlike people over a great victory 
and a new conquest, without any regard to the 
right and wrong of the war, without any refer- 
ence to the moral principles that were involved in 
the contest. It was no merely Roman triumph, 
stretching many a mile with spoils and captives, 
adding another province to the immense pagan 
despotism of the old world, and ministering afresh 
to the pride and glory of an earthly domination. 
It was a Jewish triumph, a theocratic victory, 
gained by the favor of Jehovah, founded in a 
righteous cause, and subserving the interests of 
that spiritual kingdom of which the Son of God 
and the Son of David is the Lord and King. The 
Roman general stood in a triumphal chariot, attired 
in a gold-embroidered robe, bearing in his right 
hand a laurel bough and in his left a sceptre, and 
his brows encircled with an oaken garland. He 
was the central figure in the pomp, and the few 
religious ceremonies that accompanied the proces- 
sion, as it moved up to the capitol and "Jove's 
eternal fane," were all eclipsed and lost in the 
adulations offered to a mortal. But the king of 
Israel went on foot, with the priests and the peo- 



270 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

pie, clothed in the simple linen tunic, the girdle, 
and the mitre, and his utterance was : " O give 
thanks to the Lord, for he is good ; for his mercy 
endureth forever. Let Israel now say that his 
mercy endureth forever. Let the house of Aaron 
now say that his mercy endureth forever. The 
Lord is on my side. The Lord taketh my part 
with them that help me. It is better to trust in 
the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is 
better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence 
in princes." It is the utterance not of a proud 
and self-conscious emperor but of a servant of the 
Most High, in meekness and thankfulness ascrib- 
ing glory to him from whom all glories are. 

We have selected this text because it naturally 
conducts us to a series of reflections that are ap- 
propriate to the circumstances in which we as- 
semble at the call of our chief magistrate, to offer 
thanksgiving to God. For some of the circum- 
stances are peculiar and sad. We are invited to 
be glad and thankful in the midst of the most 
melancholy and exhausting of wars, a civil war. 
Yet the invitation is a reasonable one. For there 
is no condition of man here upon earth in which 
he does not enjoy some blessings ; in which he 
does not receive more than he deserves; in which, 
therefore, it becomes him to render thanks to the 
Providence that has made him what he is, and has 
given him what he has. And it is a fact that the 
most genuine praise and thanksgiving ascend from 
those hearts which in the eye of the world have 
the least to be thankful for. St. Paul chained to 



. ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 27 I 

a soldier, and with the chains clanking upon his 
hands as he lifted them in adoration, cried to all 
suffering Christians : " Rejoice in the Lord ; and 
again I say, rejoice." And this is true of nations 
as well as individuals. There is no people upon 
the earth, whatever may be their condition, who 
have not received from God infinitely beyond their 
deservings. He maketh his sun to shine upon 
the evil and the good, and sendeth his rain upon 
the just and the unjust, and therefore the gates of 
the temple of thanksgiving should never be shut, 
either in prosperity or adversity, either in peace or 
in war. 

As a nation, we have certainly to be grateful for 
abundant harvests, for universal health, and for 
amicable relations with the other nations of the 
earth. These blessings were never more bounti- 
fully bestowed upon us than at this very moment. 
But we are at war among ourselves. Tens of 
thousands of our fellow-countrymen have been 
hurried to the judgment-seat of God ; hundreds of 
thousands of hearts are bleeding for the loss of 
husbands, fathers, and sons ; and millions of na- 
tional wealth have been destroyed. What is there 
connected with this civil war in the United States 
of America that can possibly be matter of thank- 
fulness ? Is there any silver lining to this black 
cloud ? That there is enough for fasting and hu- 
miliation in the present state of the country, none 
will dispute. But is there anything in the present 
contest that furnishes matter for devout and intel- 
ligent thanksgiving to Almighty God ? We pro- 



2/2 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 



pose to answer this question. Fully alive to the 
evils of the war, and believing that it is one of 
those " offences " which our Lord affirms must 
" needs come " in a world of sinful and passionate 
men, and upon the authors of which he denounces 
a woe, we think, nevertheless, that there are some 
features and results of it for which it becomes all 
the loyal people of the land to be thankful. We 
believe that there are some characteristics in this 
contest which warrant every loyal American in 
saying : " The Lord is on my side ; I will not 
fear : what can man do unto me ? The Lord 
taketh my part with them that help me : therefore 
shall I see my desire upon them that hate me." 

i. In the first place, we should give thanks to 
God, because this war has been the occasion of deep- 
ening and strengthening the feeling of nationality. 

The relation of the individual to the State, of 
the American citizen to the American Union, 
never had a fuller or a deeper significance than 
now. The present civil war, and the existing 
struggle for national existence, throw a flood of 
light upon a class of truths which have been almost 
lost out of sight in the past years of peace, plenty, 
and increasing luxury. Since the war of indepen- 
dence by which we became a nation, and the naval 
war with England by which our nationality was 
made respectable before the world, the people of 
the United States have been too little tried by 
severe and sharp experiences for a solid and well- 
compacted growth. The nation has made too 
rapid territorial advance for the best prosperity, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 2?3 

and the prophet Isaiah might say of us as he did 
of his own people : "Thou hast multiplied the na-. 
tion, and not increased the joy." The same inex- 
orable laws of national well-being have operated 
in our instance, as in that of ancient Rome. So 
long as the Roman could carry his nationality 
along with his conquests, so long as the energy of 
the Latin people was able to pervade the new 
elements that were received by the subjugation of 
provinces and could assimilate them — so long all 
was well. But when the bulk became too large 
to be thus permeated by the forces that issued 
from that wonderful nucleus of national life that 
was established on the Seven Hills by the union 
of the Latin with the Sabine blood ; when the ex- 
tent of conquered territory became so vast that it 
must be controlled and managed by standing ar- 
mies, and so complex that it embraced all varieties 
of religion and civilization, then it fell apart by its 
own weight. While Rome was a monarchy and 
a republic she was a nation, and possessed a na- 
tional life and strength. When she became an 
empire she lost her nationality, and her decline 
and fall came on apace. 

Our nationality has not yet been destroyed, but 
it has been weakened by the operation of similar 
causes. We have added greatly to our territory, 
and not in every instance in that just and God- 
fearing manner in which the Pilgrims obtained 
possession of Massachusetts, and William Penn 
obtained Pennsylvania. The Old World has 
poured in upon us its hundreds of thousands. 
18 



274 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 



This influx of foreign elements has been imper- 
fectly assimilated, and, what is far worse, has been 
the occasion of engendering great political cor- 
ruption by the continual endeavor of political par- 
ties to secure their weight and influence in the 
ever-recurring elections of the country. The orig- 
inal diversity of interests, occupations, and insti- 
tutions, between the North and South, the two 
great halves of the one great whole, instead of dis- 
appearing, as was expected and desired by the 
fathers of the Constitution, became intense and 
exaggerated. Internal migration itself ran upon 
lines of latitude, and not in the least upon lines of 
longitude, so that the country presented to the 
eye of the foreign spectator two streams of popu- 
lation and of tendencies directly antagonistic, and 
which refusing to blend flowed side by side as the 
Ottawa flows beside the St. Lawrence. From 
these causes our nationality grew feebler from 
year to year, and was rapidly becoming, as one 
of the old grammarians remarks of the style of 
Seneca, " sand without lime." This imperfect 
consolidation of the federal government, and this 
growing diversity of feelings and interests between 
the two geographical sections, became the occa- 
sion of an open rupture and a civil war. 

But that war has wakened anew the declining 
consciousness of nationality in the American peo- 
ple. It is the only unifying principle that now 
binds them together in their agony, and their vic- 
tory. Destroy it, and the army breaks ranks im- 
mediately, and "resolves its mystic unity into the 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 275 

breathing atoms" that were gathered at the call 
of the bugle from the whole surface of the land. 
Destroy the sense of a national life, wider than 
that of the individual, and higher than that of any 
one of the single minor sovereignties that com- 
pose the American Union, and anarchy imme- 
diately begins. It is this simple, grand, master 
feeling that now overtops all others, and causes 
the American people, who are the most conflict- 
ing of any in their local views, and the most 
pertinacious of any in their private opinions, to 
present an undivided front and a solid column 
against treason and rebellion. Men of the most 
diverse social, political, and religious sentiments ; 
men who differ greatly from one another respect- 
ing the causes of the rebellion ; men who will be 
found to differ greatly from one another upon the 
grave and difficult questions that will arise when 
the rebellion is quelled, and the whole American 
people are once more assembled, by their repre- 
sentatives, in the national congress ; men of all 
classes, conditions, and opinions have rallied with 
the unanimity of a single mind, and the determi- 
nation of a single will, under that same flag that 
flung its rippling lines over the armies of Wash- 
ington. They are fighting for the very same 
constitution, not altered in a single syllable, and 
never to be altered hereafter except by constitu- 
tional modes and methods, by which the original 
thirteen States became an organized nation, and 
into which all the rest have been grafted as living 
branches of the living vine. 



276 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 



This is something to be thankful for. It is a 
token of good from God, of favorable designs of 
the Supreme Arbiter, in relation to the country. 
For had he decreed to break it in pieces, he would 
not have wakened it to such a consciousness. He 
would have permitted the existing differences and 
dissensions, already many and great, to become 
distracting and dividing, and, as in the Instance 
of the builders of Babel, would have prevented all 
unity and concert of action. But under his favor- 
ing providence, everything from the very opening 
of the war has conspired to widen, deepen, and 
strengthen the national sentiment and the nation- 
al enthusiasm. It is stronger to-day than ever. 
The determination of the people at home, and the 
people in the camp, that "the Union must and 
shall be preserved," is now as firm and positive as 
it was in the will of that iron president who gave 
this motto to his countrymen. The maritime and 
manufacturing population of New England, the 
calm central masses of the Middle States, the 
prodigious energies of the West and Northwest, 
the gallantry and great self-sacrifice of the Border 
sovereignties, are all now massed and combined 
together as they never have been before. Could 
those two great statesmen who understood the 
genius of the American constitution better than 
any except its founders and framers, and whose 
eloquence from youth to old age was inspired by 
the idea of an American nationality more than by 
any other idea — could Webster and Clay revisit 
the earthly arena upon which they toiled and 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 277 

struggled, they would find that the master truth 
of their statesmanship and their oratory is now, at 
length, the dominant and living thought of the 
people. The masses have at last reached the 
height of their great argument ; and that senti- 
ment of Union for which they pleaded, and for 
which one of them lost his almost omnipotent local 
influence, while his name and his fame became all 
the more historic and universal, is now the sober 
and undying conviction of the day and the era. 

2. In the second place, we should render pro- 
found and hearty thanks to Almighty God, on 
this day, because the American Government is not 
waging an unjust war for foreign conquest, but a 
righteous war against domestic treason and rebel- 
lion. 

The demoralizing influence of national ambition, 
and of the wars that spring out of it, is univer- 
sally conceded. When a nation is seized with the 
lust of conquest, and begins a military career for 
purposes of self-aggrandizement, the real patriot 
will weep bitterer tears over the fictitious and ac- 
cursed glory that results, than over famine and 
pestilence. The American people within the past 
twenty years have shown some indications of such 
a temper, and had their career of prosperity been 
uninterrupted, it may have been that they would 
have formed no exception to the general rule that 
increase of power renders a nation arrogant, and 
would have fallen into the same class of examples 
with ancient Macedon and Rome, and modern 
Spain and France. 



278 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 



But as yet we have entered upon no such career 
of injustice and blood. On the contrary, we may 
hope that the present severe experience of the na- 
tion will exterminate all unlawful aspirations, and 
leave it sober, circumspect, and humble under the 
chastizing hand of God. This certainly is the ten- 
dency of the lesson of the hour ; and if the people 
shall not thoroughly learn it ; if, after they shall 
have emerged successfully from this intestine 
struggle, they shall seek collision with foreign na- 
tions, and aim at an empire to extend from the 
Great Bear to the Southern Cross, the vials of 
wrath will be poured out to their destruction and 
annihilation. 

This is not a war for foreign conquest. It is a 
war against treason within the realm ; as clearly so 
as those wars by which Great Britain has pre- 
vented Scotland and Ireland from becoming inde- 
pendent sovereignties, whenever factions and rebel- 
lions have been organized to accomplish this end. 
For the plea of the leaders of that alien govern- 
ment which has been constructed upon our southern 
borders, that they have the same right to demand 
and establish an independent existence, separate 
from the United States, that our common fore- 
fathers had when they achieved their indepen- 
dence, will not bear a moment's inspection. In 
the first place, the thirteen States which revolted 
against the government of Great Britain were dis- 
tant colonies, separated from the mother country 
by three thousand miles of water ; but the nine or 
ten States that have seceded from the American 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 279 

Union without consulting the remaining partners 
in the compact, 1 are tied to the Union by geo- 
graphical ligaments as close, strong, and vital as 
the spinal cord in the human frame. The original 
thirteen States, furthermore, constituted no portion 
of that European State-System of which Great 
Britain was an important member. Their career 

1 Even upon the theory of Calhoun that the Constitution is sim- 
ply a compact between the States, the doctrine of the right of each 
State to be the sole judge of its grievances, and to secede from the 
Union at will, and by its own isolated action, is untenable. For a 
compact, when entered into, immediately changes the status and 
relations of the individual parties. It is a cession of a certain 
amount of personal sovereignty for value received, which amount 
of sovereignty cannot be resumed without consent of parties. A 
capitalist is not obliged to enter into partnership, but having vol- 
untarily done so, he is no longer the entirely sovereign and inde- 
pendent person in respect to his capital, that he was before. He 
must hold it subject to the instrument or compact of partnership. 
In like manner, the State of South Carolina, e. g., upon entering 
into the Union, lost her status as a separate and independent sov- 
ereignty, because she solemnly bound herself to abide by the 
"constitutional compact" which she had voluntarily adopted, 
subject to revision and amendment by a majority of two-thirds of 
Congress, and three-fourths of the State legislatures. By adopt- 
ing the Constitution, her condition and obligations became like 
those of a giver of a note or bond. The giving of the bond is op- 
tional ; but having been given, its terms and promises must be 
kept. 

Furthermore, the fact that a State must be admitted into the 
Union by a vote, proves that it cannot leave it but by a vote. It 
would be as absurd to allow Ohio to go out of the Union at will, 
and by its own isolated action, as it would have been to allow it to 
enter the Union in such a manner. The evils of permitting a per- 
son to join a mercantile partnership without the consent of the 
partners, would be no greater than those that would result from 
permitting him to leave it without such consent. Secession from the 
Union by independent State action, would justify accession to it 
by the same method. If mere self-will and self-interest, without 



280 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

and their destiny would not sensibly affect the bal- 
ance of power in the Old World, for they were 
out of all relations to it. But the States of Vir- 
ginia and Louisiana, by their geography, are as in- 
timately identified with the American Union, are 
as inextricably involved in it, as the counties of 
Middlesex and York are with the three kingdoms 
that constitute Great Britain. It was one thing 
for thirteen distant colonies to declare their in- 
dependence of the British empire, and a very dif- 
ferent thing for an English county to do this. A 
new nation might spring into being three thou- 
sand miles from the island of Great Britain, with- 
out danger either to the British constitution, or to 
the system of European States, and, as it turned 
out, with great benefit to them both ; but a new 
and alien government, constituted out of an or- 
ganic and integral part of the very island itself, 
would have been the annihilation of the English 
power and the English realm. 

But again, the alleged parallelism between the 
two instances fails in another most important par- 
ticular. The thirteen colonies were not equal 
members of a democratic republic, but inferior de- 
pendencies upon a monarchy flushed with power, 

any regard to the will and vote of the constituted majority, 
may rule in the former instance, why not in the latter ? Says 
Madison : " It surely does not follow from the fact that the 
States, or rather the people embodied in them, have, as parties to 
the constitutional compact, no tribunal above them, that in con- 
troverted meanings of the compact, a minority of the parties can 
rightfully decide against the majority ; still less that a. single party 
can at will withdraw itself altogether from its compact with the 
rest: 7 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 28 I 

and fenced with the descending orders of nobility. 
They revolted from the mother country simply and 
solely because they had no representation upon the 
floor of the British parliament. It was not the 
tax upon tea, it was not the stamp act, it was not 
any very great aversion to a monarchical form of 
government, as such, that fired the heart of our 
Revolutionary fathers. The statement of Webster 
is strictly true : " They went to war against a pre- 
amble. They fought seven years against a dec- 
laration." In the phraseology of the most beauti- 
ful and magnificent period that ever dropped from 
those charmed lips: "On a question oi principle, 
while actual suffering was yet afar off, they raised 
their flag against a power, to which, for purposes 
of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in 
the height of her glory, is not to be compared ; a 
power which has dotted over the surface of the 
whole globe with her possessions and military 
posts, whose morning drum-beat following the 
sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles 
the earth .daily with one continuous and unbroken 
strain of the martial airs of England." It was 
simply the refusal to place the people of the 
colonies upon the sa me footing with the people of 
the mother country — giving them the same con- 
stitutional rights and privileges, no more and no 
less — that led our forefathers to throw off their al- 
legiance, and establish an independent government. 
Had this reasonable demand been conceded, the 
brightest of its jewels, perhaps, might not have 
dropped from the English crown, and to this day 



282 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

we might have been Englishmen under a hered- 
itary monarchy, and as proud of the rich and glo- 
rious history of England as we now are of our own 
brilliant and striking career. The wise men of 
that time, the Burkes and the Chathams, knew 
this, and saw this ; but the wisdom of these states- 
men was overborne by the folly of those politicians 
who happened, as it has happened since, to be in 
the ascendant at a critical instant. The people of 
the seceding States can make no such complaint 
as this. They were not colonies and dependencies 
of a monarchical Empire. They were members of 
a democratic Union. They had an equal, and in 
one particular, a superior representation in the na- 
tional Congress with those States whom they now 
charge with being their tyrants and their invaders, 
and whom they would compare with that aris- 
tocratic and arbitrary parliament that denied to 
Massachusetts and South Carolina any participa- 
tion in the common deliberations and decisions of 
the British realm. 

In these two facts, then, namely: that the Con- 
federate States are as geographically connected 
with the American Union as an English county is 
with the island of Great Britain, and that they 
have a common representation and vote in the na- 
tional councils, we find the proof that this war has 
no analogy with that by which our fathers gained 
their independence, but is simply a domestic re- 
bellion upon one side, and the exertion of con- 
stitutional power upon the other. The United 
States of America are engaged in suppressing the 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 283 

treason of a portion of the population, and defeat- 
ing their attempt to overthrow the common govern- 
ment. There is no intention of depriving any loyal 
state, or any loyal citizen, of a single iota of his con- 
stitutional rights. It is a war to maintain a common 
constitution and preserve a democratic government. 1 
And at this point another fact stares us in the 
face that goes to strengthen the positions that have 
been taken, and to prove still more convincingly 
that this war is a righteous one upon the side of 
the Government, and a wrong one upon that of 
its enemies. There is no necessity of redressing 

1 The declarations of the President and Congress of the United 
States, prove this assertion. The Inaugural Address of President 
Lincoln contained the following passage : "Apprehension seems 
to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the ac- 
cession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their 
peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has 
never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, 
the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed 
and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the 
published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote 
from one of those speeches when I declare that ' I have no purpose, 
directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in 
the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do 
so, and I have no inclination to do so.' Those who nominated 
and elected me, did so with a full knowledge that I had made this 
and many other similar declarations, and had never recanted 
them." And the last Congress passed the following resolution of 
Mr. Crittenden, affirming : " That this war is not waged in any 
spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, 
or purpose of overthrowing, or interfering with the rights or estab- 
lished institutions of any State, but to defend and maintain the su- 
premacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all 
the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired, 
and that as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought 
to cease-" 



284 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

grievances, either real or imaginary, under a demo- 
cratic government, by the awful method of war. 
The right of armed revolution does not hold good 
in a democracy. When a people are governing 
themselves by universal suffrage ; when no portion 
of them is made inferior by the law and consti- 
tution of the land to any other portion ; when 
neither birth, nor wealth, nor even education and 
religion, give any superior political power or privi- 
lege to a class or a section, it is the sheerest self- 
will and the worst of crimes, for a portion of the 
people to plunge the whole land into the horrors 
of war, for the removal of either real or imagi- 
nary grievances. If the political constitution of a 
country gives certain political rights to some of 
the citizens or some of the sections, and denies 
them to the remainder ; if the citizens or the sec- 
tions are not equal in the eye of the organic law 
of the realm ; then the right of armed revolution 
is a valid one. For then there is no mode of 
redressing grievances, in the last resort, but by 
war. It cannot be done by universal and equal 
suffrage, and therefore it must be done by gun- 
powder and cannon. The axiom that armed revo- 
lution is justifiable has grown up in the Old 
World, which is a world of unequal rights, a 
world of aristocracies, of monarchies, and of des- 
potisms, and it is undoubtedly true there ; but 
when it travels across the Atlantic, and comes 
into a new world of democratic ideas, and purely 
representative sovereignties, and universal suffrage, 
it ceases to be true ; it is no longer an axiom. 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 285 

For even if a majority should prove tyrannical, 
and trample on the vested rights of a minority, 
their triumph can be only temporary. It is not 
supposable that from year to year, and from one 
generation to another, the preponderance will con- 
tinue to be upon the side of injustice and wrong, 
in a country where universal suffrage prevails. 
Even when no critical questions are to be decided, 
even in the ordinary politics of popular govern- 
ment, the triumph is continually oscillating from 
one side to the other. No majority maintains 
itself as such from generation to generation. One 
administration goes and another comes, but the 
republic abides continually. Much less will a 
majority continue to hold power from year to 
year, when its victory is founded on a breach of 
constitutional rights, and results in tyranny and 
injustice toward the minority of the nation. It is 
therefore always the duty of the lesser portion to 
wait calmly for the sober second thought of the 
nation of which it is an integral part. The resort 
to the horrors of war can never be justified under 
a republican government, where the will of the 
people, and not the power of a king, and peerage, 
and privileged classes, is the sovereign arbiter. 
The Southern States of the American Union 
needed only to bide their time, to enjoy their 
entire constitutional and vested rights. We say 
this the more readily, because, though we cannot 
concede the reality of all their alleged grievances, 
we nevertheless sympathized deeply, and still sym- 
pathize, with that portion of the people who be- 



286 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

lieve that the American Constitution is a compro- 
mise between opposing views, and that the true 
politics for the whole nation lies in that general 
line of direction. But the reckless rush to arms 
for the redress of grievances ; the repudiation of 
the national symbol ; the erection of another gov- 
ernment in the very heart of the land, and the 
gathering of armies to uphold it ; all this imme- 
diately made it the first and only duty of every 
patriot to put down domestic treason, and again 
lift up the national flag where it had been struck 
down. 

But if the unrighteousness of this armed rebel- 
lion of the Southern States is clearly evident from 
the position of democracy, it is still more so from 
that of Christianity. It cannot be justified on the 
principles of the gospel. Were the rights of con- 
science involved, and were there no peaceable 
mode of securing them through the ballot-box ; 
were it an instance in which a Phillip II. were 
attempting to force the doctrines of the Papacy 
upon a Protestant province and dependency : then 
armed resistance would not only be allowable, but 
it would be blessed and crowned with glory and 
immortality, by the Lord and Head of the Church 
himself. In such a case, he says to his servants : 
"He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment 
and buy one." But the rights of conscience are 
not touched in the least, in this conflict. The 
questions that are involved are purely political, 
certainly so far as the aims of the leaders of the 
rebellion are concerned. It will not be pretended 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 287 

that they have plunged the whole country into 
war for the purpose of improving the moral and 
religious condition of the Southern people, and of 
the four millions of slaves who are in bondage to 
them. It is true that the wrath of man will praise 
God in this as in every instance, and this war will 
undoubtedly result in moral and religious benefit 
to the Northern and Southern citizen, and to the 
Southern slave, but so far as the purposes of the 
Confederate politicians are concerned, it is a 
purely political war, and stands in no connection 
with either ethics or Christianity. It is not even 
a struggle for personal liberty, which, in the eye 
of Christianity, is a matter of secondary impor- 
tance, provided the soul can enjoy u the liberty 
wherewith Christ maketh free." 

Even if the South had been despoiled of certain 
democratic rights and privileges, St. Paul might 
say to them, as he said to the Christian bondman 
as he sat with his master at the table of the Lord, 
and looked forward to a higher citizenship than 
that of earth : " Art thou called being a servant ? 
Care not for it" Rights and privileges that ap- 
pear of highest importance from a political point 
of view, sometimes become of secondary conse- 
quence from the Christian position ; and a war 
that would be justified by the principles of mere 
democracy, might be condemned altogether by the 
precepts of the gospel. And it is precisely here, 
that we affirm, with all confidence, that the atti- 
tude of the Southern Church has been wrong. 
Knowing the principles by which the proud 



288 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

natural man is actuated, we could not expect that 
the passionate and imperious Southron would turn 
the left cheek, in case he had been smitten upon 
the right. We do not expect, in the history of 
the world, that unregenerate human nature will be 
actuated by those meek and forgiving sentiments 
that belong to the children of God. But we had 
a right to expect that the Church of Christ in the 
Southern States would not be in the van of the re- 
bellion ; that their heavenly charity would suffer 
long, bearing all things, hoping all things, and en- 
during all things. Even accepting the Southern 
judgment respecting the points in dispute, and the 
Southern estimate of grievances, it still remains 
true that the principles of the gospel forbade the 
employment of "wars and fightings" to settle 
them. If a disciple of Christ meets even with in- 
sult and abuse in the streets of Charleston, or of 
New York, his religion forbids him to render rail- 
ing for railing, or to return blow for blow. Ex- 
cept in the extreme instance of saving his very life 
itself, he is prohibited from shedding human blood, 
and taking human life. The same principle ap- 
plies to war, and the relation which the Church 
should sustain to it. But we have showed that no 
such dire necessity of war overhung the democratic 
institutions and democratic populations of either 
South or North ; and therefore it follows that 
when the Southern Church descended from its 
high position above the passions of the world, 
and trailed its white robes in that secular and un- 
hallowed procession which kindled the fires of in- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 289 

testine and fratricidal war, it committed a sin. In- 
stead of feeding the passions of the high-strung, 
chivalrous, but ambitious and unregenerate masses 
amidst whom it had been planted, the Southern 
Church ought to have allayed them. She ought 
to have stood firm upon the position of the gos- 
pel, and to have cried with clear commanding 
voice to the multitude and their leaders : " For- 
give your enemies ; if thine enemy hunger, feed 
him ; if he thirst, give him drink. From whence 
come wars and fightings among you ? come they 
not hence, even of your lusts that war in your 
members ? Ye lust and have not : ye kill and de- 
sire to have, and cannot obtain : ye fight and war, 
yet ye have not, because ye ask not" It was the 
method of peace, of forbearance, and of charity, 
that should have been urged by the Christians of 
the South in that time when madness ruled the 
hour ; and for this method, if need be, they ought 
even to have dared to die. And had there been 
this Christian daring, the reward might have been 
that civic garland which is hung upon the brow of 
him who gains the victories of peace, which are 
greater than the victories of war. The judgment 
that issued from this pulpit one year ago, from 
lips and wisdom that have done much to guide the 
councils of a Church that is second to none in 
weight and influence through the land, is un- 
doubtedly true : " A little firmness on the part of 
our Southern brethren would have chained the 
dogs of war, and saved the country." l 

1 The reference is to Gardiner Spring, D.D. 
19 



29O ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

3. In the third place, the judgment and attitude 
of the A merican people and government, during 
this civil war, respecting the system of slavery, is a 
reason for thanksgiving to God. Upon this diffi- 
cult and exciting subject they have avoided the 
two extremes into which particular parties, both 
in this country and abroad, have fallen. In the 
first place, the mass of the nation and their rulers 
have rejected with an instantaneous decision the 
doctrine that slavery is right and righteous in 
itself. They deny that it stands upon the same 
basis with the institutions of the family, the state, 
and the church. The doctrine that human bond- 
age is ordained of God, and founded in natural 
right, has obtained no advocates among those to 
whom the guidance of our national affairs has 
been committed. Upon this point, the mass of 
the people and their rulers stand with the fathers 
and framers of the Constitution ; our enemies 
themselves being judges. For it is the declaration 
of the vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, 
that the lapse of time and further illumination 
have enabled the architects of the new political 
structure to correct the judgment of our common 
ancestors upon the subject of slavery. The posi- 
tion which the American people and their govern- 
ment have taken before God and the world is, 
that the system of human bondage is intrinsically 
an unjust one ; that it could not exist in a perfect 
world ; and that the progress of Christianity will 
invariably destroy it wherever it exists. This of 
itself proves that it has no foundation in the ordi- 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 291 

nance of God, or in the natural rights which he has 
established. The Christian religion will root up 
no plant which the Heavenly Father has planted. 
Whatever is abstractly right and righteous, what- 
ever is ordained of God, will live through the mil- 
lennium, and to the great burning day. 

But, on the other hand, the American people 
and government have not been able to see that an 
instantaneous emancipation of the four millions in 
bondage would be best either for them, or for the 
nation with whose weal and woe they are con- 
nected. On the contrary, they look to a gradual 
method that shall prepare them for freedom and 
self-government. They desire that slavery should 
be removed at the South, as it was at the North, 
by the voluntary action of the States themselves. 
A compulsory reform, even if it is possible, is un- 
desirable. The slave-owner must himself, of his 
own free will, manumit his bondmen. And it is in 
this reference that the maintenance of the Amer- 
ican Union is of untold importance. The future 
welfare of the black man, as well as the white 
man, depends upon the perpetuity of the United 
States of America. In the three quarters of a 
century during which the evil of slavery has ex- 
isted under the American constitution, a process 
of amelioration has been going on, which if un- 
checked will secure its final removal. It required 
several centuries to eradicate human bondage from 
the ancient Christendom ; but fifty years more of 
such influences and tendencies as were at work 
when the North and the South met in a harmoni- 



292 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

ous congress, and the great questions of the coun- 
try were discussed in a comprehensive and national 
style and temper, would result in the substantial 
emancipation of the African race. This happy 
consummation now depends upon the restoration 
of the Union. If the country is dismembered, 
and a Southern Confederacy is established, the 
future of the slave is overhung with black dark- 
ness. But if the North and the South shall be 
again united upon the ancient constitutional basis, 
the Federal Government being acknowledged as 
supreme within its sphere, while yet the rights re- 
served to the several States are not infringed upon 
in the least, then "the era of good feeling" will 
dawn once more, the difficult problems will be ex- 
amined in that conciliatory temper which charac- 
terized the discussions that accompanied the for- 
mation and adoption of the Constitution, and a 
way of escape out of his bondage will be discov- 
ered for the African, that will cause no exaspera- 
tion, and shed no human blood. 

It is matter of devout thanksgiving to God, in 
whose hand are the hearts of all men, that the 
American people and government are standing 
upon this position. Thomas Jefferson, after de- 
scribing the evil nature and influence of the system 
of human bondage, enforces all that he has ad- 
vanced upon this point, by the remark, " I tremble 
for my country when I remember that God is 
just." Well might every American tremble for 
the result of this civil war, if the people and gov- 
ernment stood before God and the world, as do 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 293 

the leaders of the Southern rebellion, affirming the 
inherent righteousness of human bondage, and lay- 
ing it down as the corner stone of a political edi- 
fice. But they are no such advocates of a system 
which has been condemned and rejected by all the 
other civilized nations of the world, and upon 
which the frown of Divine Providence manifestly 
rests. They desire its removal, they look for its 
removal, and they are ready to pour out their treas- 
ure without stint to accomplish it. At the same 
time they remember that it is not like an individ- 
ual sin, which because it is confined to a single 
person can be put away by a volition. It is an 
hereditary corruption, organized into human soci- 
eties and relationships, which it requires time and 
persevering effort perfectly to eradicate. They 
also bear in mind that the States most directly 
concerned should have a voice in respect to the 
ways and the means, should come into the com- 
mon councils of the nation and deliberate, and 
should legislate upon it precisely as did the States 
of New York and Massachusetts when they put 
away the evil from among them. 

Such, then, are some of the reasons for thanks- 
giving in this time of rebellion and civil war. 
Such are some of the grounds for hoping and be- 
lieving that that Supreme Arbiter who sets up 
and pulls down the nations of the earth as it 
pleases him, is upon the side of the American peo- 
ple and government in their endeavor to prevent a 
dissolution of their Union, and the long-continued 
wars and anarchy that must result from such a 



294 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

catastrophe. The consciousness that we are and 
must continue to be one nation and people, has 
been evoked and strengthened by the conflict. 
Our armies are not seeking to conquer any foreign 
country, but simply to preserve the boundaries of 
the United States intact. They are battling solely 
to maintain the authority of the Constitution — an 
instrument of remarkable political wisdom, well 
adapted to secure the interests of all sections of 
the land, and under whose benign influences all 
sections have enjoyed a singular peace and pros- 
perity for seventy-five years. And, lastly, they are 
not fighting to perpetuate forever the system of 
human slavery, but to preserve a government and 
an order of things under which that system has 
been gradually waning in power and influence, 
and through which alone it can be ultimately 
abolished. 

If these things are so, if we have not erred in 
our judgment, may not every loyal American take 
up, humbly yet confidently, the utterance of the 
Psalmist : "The Lord is on my side ; I will not 
fear : what can man do unto me ? The Lord 
taketh my part with them that help me ; therefore 
shall I see my desire upon them that hate me." 
While the people and their rulers ought to 
humble themselves under the mighty hand of 
God, for the pride, the vain-glory, and the self- 
confidence which have brought these terrible 
judgments upon them, we verily think that they 
should give thanks to God, that so far as the prin- 
ciples that underlie this civil war are concerned, 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 295 

they are in the right, and their opponents are in 
the wrong. We believe that the time will come 
when our Southern fellow-countrymen will see 
that this rebellion was needless, was reckless, was 
unrighteous ; that the Constitution which their 
fathers adopted, and to which they themselves had 
sworn allegiance, had power and virtue enough in 
it to secure the rights of all sections of the nation ; 
and that they needed only to bide their time, and 
give it a full trial, to find it what Washington de- 
nominated it, "the palladium of their political 
safety and prosperity." We believe that the time 
is coming, when the sentiments of the Father of 
his country, enunciated in his "Farewell Address," 
respecting the sacredness of the Constitution, and 
the obligation of all the people to respect its pro- 
visions, will be read in the light of this rebellion 
with calm joy by those who have stood by the 
Union, and with sorrow by those who have struck 
at its life. " The Constitution," says Washington, 
" which at any time exists, till changed by ait ex- 
plicit act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory 
upon all." 

Confessing with deep humility our national sins, 
we may nevertheless be thankful, upon this day, 
that our national attitude in the war is what it is. 
Through the thick cloud that envelops the pres- 
ent, we may look for a brighter future. We ex- 
pect the perpetuity of the American Union. We 
expect the return of the seceding States upon the 
ancient basis, and with the old national feeling. 
There will be deep joy and thanksgiving, but there 



296 ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 

will be no triumph over the result. It will be 
Americans meeting Americans after a temporary 
alienation. It was a law in the Roman state that 
the general who had been victorious in a civil war 
should enjoy no triumph. It was only when the 
struggle had been with a foreign enemy, and the 
Roman arms had been successful, that the Imper- 
ator returned to the city in his triumphal chariot, 
followed by his soldiers and the long line of cap- 
tives and spoils. But when the contest had been 
between Roman and Roman ; when the state had 
succeeded in quelling an intestine rebellion, or set- 
tling an internal dissension ; the successful general 
found his triumph in his success and the private 
regard of the citizens. Antony celebrated no 
triumph even upon the suppression of the conspir- 
acy of Catiline ; Cinna and Marius arrogated to 
themselves no public honors for their victory over 
the party of Sulla ; and Julius Caesar, after the 
memorable battle of Pharsalia, did not lead the 
remnants of the great party of Pompey in chains 
up the Capitolian Hill. A civil war is too sad, 
and too exhausting, to be followed by triumphal 
processions. 

In this spirit let the war be prosecuted. Let it 
be confined strictly to the restoration of the author- 
ity of the Constitution over all parts of the land. 
Let it be understood that the questions in dispute 
between the North and the South may and can 
be settled by the old constitutional and peaceful 
methods of public discussion and the ballot-box ; 
but that their settlement by armed revolution, by 



ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY 297 

the dismemberment of the American Union, and 
by the establishment of another government upon 
the southern borders of the land, is impossible. 
Right, and justice, and moderation will then be 
the strength of our cause. With all our sin and 
unworthiness, we can nevertheless appeal to the 
God of battles that our motives in this war are up- 
right, and that our success will be a blessing to 
the entire nation, South as well as North. Then 
may we lift up in thanksgiving that lowly, and 
that lofty psalm : " If it had not been the Lord 
who was on our side, now may Israel say ; if it 
had not been the Lord who was on our side, when 
men rose up against us ; then had they swallowed 
us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against 
us ; then the waters had overwhelmed us, the 
stream had gone over our soul ; then the proud 
waters had gone over our soul. Blessed be the 
Lord, who hath not given us a prey to their teeth. 
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of 
the fowlers ; the snare is broken, and we are es- 
caped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who 
made heaven and earth." 



ie The most learned and searching work in its line that ha» 
mppeared in this country within the present generation." 

— CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 

DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 

By WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D., 

Professor of Systematic Theology in Union Theological Seminary. 



Second Edition, Two Volumes, 8vo, with Portrait, Price $7.00. 



" Dr. Shedd's theology is full of the word of God in its very essence, it is pervaded by 
the great thoughts of the master-minds of all the ages, and it is presented to us in a style 
remarkable for its purity and clearness. The student who masters these volumes will be 
well armed for controversy and well equipped for teaching." — New York Observer. 

"These volumes are, in more senses than one, weighty. They are full of matter. Dr. 
Shedd is master of a singularly clear, strong, and expressive style, and wastes no words. 
Ample as are his discussions, there is nothing superfluous. His full, yet choice diction, 
admirably sets forth his profound and well-ordered thought.'' — Watchman, Boston. 

"The two volumes are the result of eighteen years of special study, and of forty 
years labor in theological research. The treatment is such as might be expected of Dr. 
Shedd: scholarly, profound, devout, thorough." — New York Examiner. 

"As a whole, the work is the clearest and most exhaustive statement of dogmatic 
theology that has yet been made, and for that reason it is likely to attract as much atten- 
tion from scientists as from theologians." — Philadelphia Times. 

" The style never labors nor becomes obscure. The reader is never in doubt as to 
the meaning of the author. The work easily takes precedence among the various pres- 
entations of Puritan Calvinism, and will have a permanent value as an explanation ot 
that influential system of religious philosophy." — Andover Review. 

" Dr. Shedd's great power is in the clearness and fulness and exactness of his doc- 
trinal statements, and in their illustration. He is a master of sentences. No one can 
doubt his meaning. These volumes are therefore eminently readable and many an 
earnest student will find strength and inspiration in reading them thoroughly from end 
to end." — Chicago Standard. 

"Into these ample volumes, as into a reservoir, have flowed all the streams of Dr. 
Shedd's lifelong studies — literary, ethical, philosophical, exegetical, scientific, and theo- 
logical. It is delightful to think of the usefulness for generations of these volumes to^ 
ministers and students. To Dr. Shedd we extend our hearty thanks for this great' 
work." — New York Evangelist. 

"There are two features of the work that specially aid in making it a fine text-book. 
In the first place, it is didactic rather than polemic. He states, expounds, and defends 
what he believes to be the true view and spends little time in expounding and opposing 
heresies. In the second place, the discussions are compact. The style is absolutely 
clear, and no subject that he undertakes to unfold is at all slighted, but there is no waste 
of words. We congratulate Dr. Shedd on the completion of this great work. We 
congratulate the readers of theology on their possession of it." — Rev. John DeWitt, in 
The Presbyterian Review. 

"The students of Dr. Charles Hodge will find it very profitable to put this work 
beside his. On some of the particulars of the Calvinistic or Augustinian, or Pauline 
system, the two differ. The contrast in the plan and working out and style of the two 
works is great. But they are the complements, each of the other. It will be an intel- 
lectual tonic to read the two together. We wish that every minister had them both." 

— Presbyterian Journal, 

"This vigorous, mature, and stately work is likely to become one of the standard 
authorities of scholarly orthodoxy. Its chief peculiarities are its solidity, scriptural- 
ness, and massive logical force. Professor Shedd is himself a master in theology, and 
he has reverence for masters in his own department." — Our Day. 



Dr. Shedd's Works. 



" These volumes will take rank as they will naturally be compared with, the ency- 
clopaedic treatise of Dr. Charles Hodge, and they will stand well this severe tes^. Less 
full and exhaustive in the citation of authorities and the discussion of opposing views, its 
positive and constructive features are equally strong. In one feature Dr. Shedd's 
treatment of theological questions will be more satisfactory to many minds than Dr. 
Hodge's, and that is, the wider scope and office he accords to the reason, in the formula- 
tion and defence of doctrines. He writes from the postulate that while the reason may 
not independently discover the dogmas of revealed religion, and a revelation is necessary, 
yet a true dogma, when revealed, will be so accordant with reason, that its aid may and 
must be invoked for its understanding and confirmation."— Christian Intelligencer. 



DR. SHEDD'S OTHER WORKS. 



ft. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN 

DOCTRINE. Two vols., crown 8vo. 
Seventh edition, cloth, $5.00. 

HOMILETICS AND PASTORAL 

THEOLOGY. One vol., crown 8vo. 
Seventh edition, cloth, $2.50. 

A CONCISE ANALYTICAL COM- 
MENTARY ON ST. PAUL'S EPIS- 
TLE TO THE ROMANS. One vol., 
crown 8vo, cloth, $2.50. 

SERMONS TO THE SPIRITUAL 
MAN. One vol., crown 8vo., cloth, 
$2.50. 



SERMONS TO THE NATURAL 

MAN. One vol., crown 8vo. Third 
edition, cloth, $2.50. 

THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. One vol., 
8vo. Enlarged and carefully revised 
edition, cloth, $2.50. 

LITERARY ESSAYS. A series that 
relate principally to ./Esthetics and Lit- 
erature. With portrait. One vol., 
crown, 8vo, cloth, $2.50. 



THE DOCTRINE 

PUNISHMENT. 
8vo., $1.50. 



OF ENDLESS 

One vol., crown 



SERMONS TO THE SPIRITUAL MAN. 



" The thought which they express is not only profound and well wrought out, 
but it has a certain grip on the mind which insures more than a temporary influence 
however strong that may be." — Congregationalist, Boston. 

"All are nobly written. All contain passages which could have been produced 
by no one but a master of style. Most of them are truly eloquent, and their eloquence 
is of the highest type." — Presbyterian, Pa. 

"The last two discourses, entitled " Every Christian a Debtor to the Pagan," 
and " The Certain Success of Evangelistic Labor," place the duty of the world's 
Christianization upon its broad Scriptural foundations, and set forth the reasons for 
its progressive and ultimate triumphs with inspiring eloquence." — Christian Intelli" 
gencer, Neiv York. 

" To all minds awake and in earnest touching spiritual things, we can unre- 
servedly commend this volume. It will be sure to aid in the struggle against sin, and 
in victory over it." — New York Evangelist, 

" The sermons are peculiarly adapted for reading, and they are among the most 
ipiritual and thoughtful discourses that have been published in recent years."— 
liVeslcyan Christian Advocate. 



Dr. Shedd's Worhs. 



"Dr. Shedd's sermons command respect from the intellectual ability of theii 
author. They are interesting exhibitions of the way in which a modern Calvinist, 
Ivho holds with great tenacity to the Augustinian theology, views divine progress in 
its relation to human character and destiny. The new departure has not yet invaded 
Dr. Shedd's mind to any extent. Consequently, to a progressive Christian thinker, 
the premises of most of his discourses are unacceptable." — Christian Register^ 
Boston. 

cl They are distinguished by a clear and luminous style, and the boldness and 
tfigor which comes from profound conviction. No better volume of sermons, none 
more thoughtful, spiritual, or satisfying, has come from the press for a long time."— 
Christian at Work, New York. 

" We commend these sermons to our readers ; for though, as a Presbyterian divine^ 
We could not endorse all his views, yet, upon the great essential doctrines and duties 
pf Christianity, we are much at one with him." — Churchman, New York. 



A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

,l Dr. Shedd has furnished an important contribution to the study of church his- 
tory. To have made a readable book — a book which must interest the general scholar 
as well as the professed theologian — -on a topic so difficult and so remote from the 
ordinary interests and literary currents of the time, is itself a rare and very great 
merit, demanding graceful recognition from all the scholars of the land." — North 
A merican Review. 

" It is many years since a more valuable contribution has been made, in this 
country or England, to theological literature ; one the study of which will yield riper 
fruits of Christian knowledge. These volumes are marked by a thoroughness of 
knowledge and clearness of statement, as well as by a certain vital element which 
pervades them, and which shows the love of the author for his great theme, and that 
he takes his position, not without but within his subject, and so relates the transfor- 
mations and developments of religious thought as if he had himself passed through 
them." — Bibliotheca Sacra. 

" We hold that this is the most important contribution that has been made to our 
theological literature during the present age." — Presbyterian Standard. 

" In our judgment, no production of greater moment has been given to the public 
for a long time." — Princeton Review. 

"A body of theological history which is in form as perfect as it is in substance 
excellent." — N. Y. Evening Post. 

" It well deserves an honorable and permanent place in the standard literature of 
theology." — New Rnglander. 

"A rich addition to our theological literature." — American Theological Review. 

" Dr. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine, on its first appearance, was unani< 
mously recognized as filling with remarkable success a blank that had existed in our 
English literature on this important subject, and it still holds the foremost place in 
works of this class." — Edinburgh Daily Review. 

HOMILETICS AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY. 

"The work will be found to be an admirable guide and stimulus in whatever per- 
tains to this department of theology. The student finds himself in the hands of a 
master able to quicken and enlarge his scope and spirit. The homiletical precepts 
ire well illustrated by the author's own style, which is muscular, while quivering 
with nervous life. Nowadays one rarely reads such good English writing — elevated 
and clear, sinewy and flexible, transparent for the thought. Each topic is handled 
in a true progressive method. Our young ministers may well make a study of this 
book." — American Theol. Review. 



Dr. Shedd's Works. 



"We have read this book with almost unqualified approval. We cannot but regard 
it as, on the whole, the very best production of the kind with which we are acquainted 
Die topics discussed are of the first importance to every minister of Christ engaged is 
active service, and their discussion is conducted by earnestness as well as ability, and in 
t style which for clear, vigorous, and unexceptionable English, is itself a model.*' — A*. Y 
Evangelist. 

"The ablest book on the subject which the generation has produced," — Christian 
Intelligencer. 

"Dr. Shedd's Homiletics and Pastoral Theology has everywhere been welcomed 
as a sagacious and valuable contribution to the equipment of our rising preachers " 
Edinburgh Daily Review. 

SERMONS TO THE NATURAL MAN. 

" These Sermons are an excellent course upon the theology of the law. Dr. Shedd 
is one of the best known in this country of American theologians, and those who aw 
acquainted with his writings do not require to be told that he carries out his ideas with 
perspicuity, force, and conclusive completeness." — Edinburgh Daily Review. 

"The reader, whether he assent to the deductions of the author or not, must admit 
that they are enforced with logical conciseness, a rare wealth of learning, and an uncom- 
mon ability of argumentation." — N. Y. Evening Post. 

" We commend this volume to all who love the ' strong meat ' of christian truth, 
and who rejoice in the adaptation of the power of the gospel to the deepest needs of the 
1 natural man.' "—Nat* I Baptist, Phila. 

"The author has given us a collection of clear, logical, earnest discourses, well 
adapted to the spirit of the times. We specially commend the work to preachers of the 
gospel." — Methodist Protestant, Baltimore. 

"These sermons are clear in thought, the style is lucid and simpie, and free from 
the much-worn phrases of the pulpit. The arguments of the author are well arranged and 
put with great force." — Christian Union, 

THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. 

44 These Essay * bear traces on every page, not only of a mind disciplined to cK 
thinking, and at home in the abstractions of philosophy and theology, but versed in the 
noblest works of literature, and equally able to appreciate the creations of art and imagi 
nation. The terseness and vigor of the style are well mated to the character of the 
thought."— New Ettglander. . . , 

"These Essays are all marked by profound thought and perspicuity of sentiment 
The author has achieved a high reputation for the union of philosophic insight with genu- 
ine scholarship ; of depth and clearness of thought with force and elegance of style ; 
and for profound views of sin and grace, cherished not merely on theoretical, but still 
more on moral and experimental grounds." — Princeton Review. 

"The Essay upon Evolution, is an extraordinary specimen of the metaphysical 
treatise, and the charm of its rhetoric is not less noticeable Prof. Shedd never puts hij 
creed under a bushel ; but there are few students of any sect or class that will not derive 
peat assistance from his labors."— Universalist Quarterly. 

" The tendency of this volume is to encourage doctrinal investigation and doctrinal 
preaching ; to stimulate clergymen to improve their methods of study, and to quicken 
their love of inquiry into the profoundest truths of religion."— Bibliotheca Sacra. 

"These Essays abound in strong thought, firmly and clearly expressed, and in this 
the reader of a different school of theology will take a pleasure, while he may dissent 
from the theory propounded."— Methodist Quarterly. 

"A book equally remarkable for profound thought and for dogmatic severity 
Perhaps no stronger work has gone forth of late from any American theologian, nor an* 
work which at the same time runs so wholly in the face of the present drift of religious 
icntiment and scientific study."— New York Times. 

" The Genevan reformer has probably no abler or more devoted follower, at the 
present day than the author of these essays. In the circle of his readers he will find 
kiany who regard tie study of his writings as an admirable exercise, for the vigor o 1 
their statements, the closeness of their logic, and the athletic grasp of their conclusion*, 
klthowgh their own convictions are not represented in his system of theology. '— Airs* 

York Tribune. ... , , . . j 

" Dr. Shedd's weighty and forceful rhetoric has been the admiration and detpan 
>f most of his readers. To weight and force, we must add one other quality which dio- 
anguishes it. namely, fervor. Every theological student and every minister shouk) 
»os«c-ss. and should not onlv read, but ftudv this volume. 1 '- The Presbvten^m 



Dr. Shedd's Works. 



COMMENTARY ON ROMANS. 

"No better discipline could be suggested to a young minister than a patient and faith* 
ful study of a volume like this .... not only because it is the freshest, but 
because it is so purely intellectual and spiritual, wasting no time upon side issues, but 
grappling manfully with the highest and most recondite themes." — Christian Intelli- 
gencer. 

"We know of no commentary by any living author on this- epistle that, in our esti 
mation, deserves to be esteemed above it." — Hartford Religious Herald. 

"To the thorough learning of an accomplished scholar, it adds a style of special 
grace, luminous without superficiality, and, sparkling without levity." — Lutheran Mis- 
sionary. ' 

"We consider this volume to be indispensable to a theological library." — Richmond 
Central Presbyterian. 

"We have been instructed, interested, and edified as we have turned over his 
pages, and while not agreeing with him in all particulars, we have always been com- 
pelled by him to revise our views, and give a reason for our preference." — Christian at 
Work. 

"The commentary is brief; there is no verbiage, no amplification, no preaching ; it 
is as clear as crystal." — Illustrated Christian Weekly. 

"We like thoroughly the keenly critical scholarship of Dr. Shedd's book and the 

vigor of his style We commend the work as an excellent stimulus, and a 

great help in doctrinal study." — Congregationalist. 

" Like the previous writings of Professor Shedd, this learned and scholarly volume 
is remarkable for the acute insight with which it applies profound philosophical principles 
to the elucidation of religious doctrine." — N. Y. Tribune. 

LITERARY ESSAYS. 

" His productions are never of an ephemeral character ; though often separated by 
a wide interval of years, they possess the unity which grows out of thoroughness of 
examination and earnestness of conviction ; powerful in argument, lucid in exposition, 
and effective in style, they challenge the interest of many readers who are unable to 
assent to their conclusions." — N. Y. Tribune. 

" Here is somethins: deserving a permanent place in the realm of reading 

We wish to notice especially, commending it at the same time to the careful study of 
every one, the essay on 'The Influence and Method of English Studies.' .... We 
can, without hesitation, say, that it is one of the most profound, and thoughtful, and 
scholarly productions on this subject that we have ever read." — The Churchman. 

"The essays, one and all, are worthy of the Professor's pen. They reveal extensive 
reading, culture of a high order, and sympathy with all that is true and beautiful and 
good in nature, in life, and in art." — N. Y. Scotsman. 

"They bear the marks of the author's scholarship, dignity, and polish of style, and 
profound and severe convictions of truth and righteousness as the basis of culture as 
well as character." — Chicago Interior. 

"The severe and chastened beauty of his style is a fit vehicle for the lofty truths among 
which his mind ranges, and which he here announces and defends." — Presbyterian. 

"Dr. Shedd deals with themes not of passing but of enduring importance, and his 
productions on these subjects, being those of a wide reader and profound thinker, will 
always be valuable." — Christian at Work. 



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